Residents complained that the clash began in the vicinity of the police station and yet led to widespread vandalism till Nadiyal, which falls in the Kolkata Police jurisdiction.I was sitting in our cake shop when suddenly a mob came and started pelting stones. I was hit and started bleeding. However, I waited for the mob to leave… Only then was I rushed to the hospital,” 25-year-old Rakesh Shaw, with three stitches on his head, recounted Wednesday’s clash at Rabindranagar in Maheshtala area in South 24 Parganas district on the outskirts of Kolkata that left five cops injured.
Residents complained that the clash began in the vicinity of the police station and yet led to widespread vandalism till Nadiyal, which falls in the Kolkata Police jurisdiction. For close to two hours, hundreds of people kept throwing stones targeting our houses. Imagine this happened when the police station is in the vicinity. For two hours, no police came to save us,” said 63-year-old resident Ramjanki Mahato. According to the residents, violence started just outside a temple, adjacent to the Rabindranagar Police Station. They said a physically-challenged Muslim youth, who had been selling fruits on a cart at that spot, was asked to shift, citing the expansion of the temple. For over a month, people involved with temple work had been asking the vendor to leave, but he did not pay heed.