Suman Bhattacharyya
The accidental death of a noted criminal, Abdul Hossain, alias Sentia, in a luxury apartment owned by a TrinaMool Congress leader sparked controversy in Kolkata. The incident occurred on October 17, Saturday night.
Abdul Hossain alias Sentia was a criminal from Bhadreswar area in Hooghly district. Sentia is reported to have been absconding with a record of at least eighteen cases, including those of murder, extortion and robbery. The residents of the area and other apartment owners alleged that Hossain and his accomplices had organised a party in the apartment owned by an influential TMC leader from Malda. The gang had also invited a few sex workers for the party they had organised at the Paikpara condominium in north Kolkata. Eventually, a drunken brawl broke out in the party, and the chaos led the neighbours to call the police.
When officers from the local Chitpur police station arrived at the spot, Hossain and his associates tried to lock the apartment from inside to prevent the police from entering it. Apprehending an unexpected arrest, Hossain tried to flee from the fourth storey apartment by jumping into the cornice with the help of a window curtain. A drunken Hossain fell off the cornice and was injured. He was declared dead when he was brought to the nearest R G Kar Hospital by police.
The luxury apartment where Sentia and his accomplices were partying that night belongs to Payel Khatun, a Zilla Parishad member and In-Charge of the Health Department in Malda, North Bengal. Her husband, Mohammad Yasin, is known as a powerful leader in Malda district. Yasin had also won the 2013 Panchayat Election as an independent candidate. He was earlier with the CPIM. He switched loyalties in 2013 and emerged as a TMC leader. Reports say Mamata Banerjee had herself cautioned the leaders from Malda to control Yasin, but he developed to be very popular in the youth wing of TMC.
Yasin also has 12 criminal cases registered against his name at the Ratua police station in Malda. But the number of cases, his criminal record of imprisonment and his notorious image did not pose any hindrance to his becoming the District Secretary of the ruling party.
But now, Abdul Hossain alias Sentia’s taking shelter in Yasin’s north Kolkata apartment in Paikpara and his subsequent death has triggered a sharp reaction from the opposition parties and created massive embarrassment for the TMC leadership. Although Yasin claimed that he was out of the station on Saturday and neither he nor his wife had any idea how the miscreants had broken into their apartment, neither the police nor the neighbours are convinced with his version of the story.
This incident only proves how criminals are operating freely in the districts of West Bengal. It also points the finger at how the TMC bigwigs in the state directly patronise lumens.
