DHAKA: India’s West Bengal chief minister and also Trinamool Congress (TMC) chief Mamata Banerjee claimed that hired assailants from Bangladesh are committing murders.

The chief minister made the remark on Saturday while addressing senior police officials in bordering district of North 24 Parganas, following a series of murders of TMC leaders due to factional feud, The New Indian Express published the report Sunday night.

Indicating ‘the presence of illegal Bangladeshi migrants in the state’ Mamata asked the law enforcers to step up the vigil along the border with Bangladesh.

Confirming the matter, North 24 Parganas police chief Tanmoy Roy Chowdhury said that as a result, they have arrested a large number of Bangladeshis from Bongaon.

‘We are holding a meeting with senior BSF officials to determine how such a large number of people could cross over (into the country) and start living here,’ he added.

The Indian media said that earlier, a murder took place inside the party office at Sodepur.

Mentioning the Barrackpore Bar Association president, who was shot there, the report said that, interestingly, Mamata had lashed out at India prime minister Narendra Modi and even dubbed him as ‘Face of communal riots trying to divide Bengal on religious lines’, when Modi broached the topic of the presence of illegal Bangladeshis in the state.

More importantly, the CM had categorically denied the presence of Bangladeshi nationals in West Bengal at that time.

‘He (Modi) does not know history or geography. All Muslims living here are Indian citizens. He is threatening to deport them. I dare him to touch anyone as a Bangladeshi,’ she, earlier, said.

But now, faced with a rising crime graph and the murders of TMC functionaries, allegedly done at the ‘behest’ of their own party leaders, Mamata held the ‘criminal infiltrators, who cross over from Bangladesh, responsible for the deterioration in the law and order’ in the border districts and the ‘erring police officials’.

BDST: 1725 HRS, JUN 23, 2014