Mob lynches election officer – Calcutta Telegraph

Posted on Thursday, May 22nd, 2008 by in Raiganj.

A 47-year-old man who was lynched by a mob early yesterday morning has been identified as Jagadish Basfore, a polling offi-cer who was apparently on his way to the town after election duty on Sunday.

Basfore was beaten to death on the suspicion that he was a child-lifter.

Residents of Pansila village, 8km from here, had allegedly found him in a drunken state, dragging away a reluctant 12-year-old boy.

The boy, who is in hospital and in a state of trauma — a result probably of watching the assault so closely, doctors said — has been unable to give his family’s whereabouts.

Basfore’s brother Paran identified the body at the Raiganj District Hospital this morning. Basfore was a resident of Kaliaganj, 22km from here, where he worked as a Group D employee in the rural hospital.

North Dinajpur police chief Swapan Banerjee Purnapatra said six persons have been arrested. “Investigations have revealed that he (Basfore) was drunk and had a child with him,” the officer said. “It is a mystery why he landed up in the village when he was supposed to report to the district headquarters.”

Basfore was on polling duty at the Deenanagore Adivasi Free Primary School.

Swapan Kumar Pal, the superintendent of the hospital where the boy has been admitted, said: “He is on sedatives. The trauma is probably because he saw the mob frenzy from such close quarters.”

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