Murshidabad:
Four persons were killed in clashes on Monday during the fourth phase of the Bengal Panchayat elections, stained by violence.
One person, Abdul Mannan, was killed in firing by the paramilitary Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) in the Malda district. The CRPF allegedly opened fire after being mobbed by villagers for beating a Congress candidate.
In another incident a woman, Noor Jahan Bibi was killed in a village in the Murshidabad district, which has seen a flurry of bombings and where three people were killed yesterday.
In Birbhum, the bodies of two CPM supporters were found this morning. An independent candidate's father was shot at in the same district and has been moved to a hospital in Kolkata.
The violence spiraled in the absence of enough central security forces on the ground, despite warnings of clashes after the earlier phases of polling. 13 people have been killed since the polls began on July 11.
Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has blamed the state Election Commission for not ensuring enough security for the polls.
The areas that are most tense are the Murshidabad and Birbhum districts of the state as over one crore people vote for local governments in the fourth of five phase polls.
All 4,935 polling booths in Murshidabad have been declared highly sensitive, yet central forces were thin on the ground, mostly operating as mobile squads.
NDTV found personnel digging out crude bombs lying around a polling booth, moments after a man was stabbed in a clash between rival political workers.
A 12-year-old boy was injured in a bombing during a clash between the CPM and Congress in Murshidabad.
A leader from Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress publicly threatened on Sunday to behead a rival from the Congress party.
"Bapi Dutta, it would not take me even a minute to behead you," shouted Monirul Islam, a state legislator, at an election rally in the Birbhum district.
The threat was directed at Bapi Dutta, a Congress leader of Birbhum district.
Last week, another politician from the Trinamool had asked party workers to attack the houses of independent candidates and hurl bombs at police men.