Journalist killing: TSR commandant arrested, sent to police custody

Agartala, November 22  

Advertisement

The commandant of the 2nd battalion of the Tripura State Rifles (TSR), Tapan Debbarma, was on Wednesday arrested in connection with the killing of a journalist inside the battalion headquarters near here and remanded in police custody for ten days by a local court.

Superintendent of Police (Police Control), Harkumar Debbarna said the commandant of the counter-insurgency paramilitary force was arrested for conspiring to kill the scribe, Sudip Datta Bhowmik, inside the battalion headquarters at Radhakishore Nagar yesterday.

TSR constable Nandalal Reang, who allegedly shot dead the journalist and was arrested last night, was also sent to police custody for ten days.

He and Debbarma were produced this morning before Chief Judicial Magistrate Sharmishtha Mukherjee who passed the order.

Bhowmik, a reporter of the local Bengali daily ‘Syandan Patrika’, was gunned down around 2 pm, West Tripura Superintendent of Police Abhijit Saptarshi said.

He was the second scribe to be killed in the north eastern state in two months.

His body was taken in a procession today by journalists and newspaper employees of the state after postmortem at the G B Hospital.

The body was taken to the Agartala Press Club and the office of ‘Syandan Patrika’. Editors, journalists and senior politicians like Tripura BJP president Biplab Deb, BJP MLA Sudip Barman and CPI(M) M P, Shankar Prasad Datta offered floral tribute to the slain scribe.

The procession stopped near the official residence of Chief Minister Manik Sarkar and held a protest there alleging that the Left Front government has failed to provide safety and security to the journalists.

The protesting journalists also burnt jackets which had been provided to them by the police for the purpose of identification.

“We have burnt the jackets in protest against the government’s failure to provide security to us. Within two months, two journalists were killed. The chief minister is also the home minister of the state and he cannot evade the responsibility,” Pranab Sarkar, secretary of the Tripura Journalists Union told reporters.

Editor of ‘Syandan Patrika’, Subal Kumar Dey alleged that Datta Bhowmik was killed because he had exposed the many misdeeds and corruption by the commandant.

“It was a cold-blooded murder and Sudip was killed because he had written 11 news items exposing the commandant,” he added. — PTI