Kolkata: The poll campaign may have ended almost 24 hours earlier in Bengal than other states, but not violence. A 46-year-old booth worker of the BJP was found murdered in Krishnanagar Lok Sabha constituency. The deceased has been identified as Haradhan Mridha.

Though the BJP blamed Trinamool for the murders, Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s party was quick to rubbish the allegations.

This is a plot we have all witnessed time and again in Bengal over the last few months.

Also read: Lok Sabha elections phase 6: 1 BJP cadre killed, 3 injured in Bengal

However, Haradhan is not the first one to die in Bengal. It is alleged that non-stop brutal violence is plaguing Bengal and people who are trying to stand up against this injustice are paying the price with their lives.

Here is a list of BJP cadre who lost their lives in Bengal.

1. Ramin Singh

Hours before the sixth phase of the Lok Sabha election, a booth president of the BJP was found dead. He was found with multiple injury marks on his body. The body was retrieved from Gopiballabpur in Bengal’s Jhargram district.

Ramin Singh's death was quickly branded as a political murder by BJP's top leadership. Kailash Vijayvargiya said, “For democracy, it’s a sad news. A section of TMC goons entered the house of BJP booth worker Ramin Singh at Junasola, block Gopiballabpur, Jhargram and killed him brutally. He was killed because he was the booth president of the BJP.” TMC, however, denied the allegation.

2. Shishu Pal Shahish

The body of an active BJP worker was found hanging from a tree under mysterious circumstances in Bengal's Purulia district in April. This happened even as the second phase of the Lok Sabha election was on. The deceased was identified as 22-year-old Shishupal Shahish and his death created massive tension in the district.

The Trinamool, quite predictably, tried to pass off Shahish’s death as suicide but the BJP has called it a political murder. Even, the victim’s father blamed the TMC for his son's murder.

3. Trilochan Mahato

Eighteen-year-old Trilochan Mahato was found hanging from a tree in Bengal's Purulia in June 2018. Mahato was a BJP worker and his father was also a Dalit BJP leader, identified as Pano Mahato of Balarampur block.

When the young boy was found hanging, barely 200 meters away from his house, his T-shirt had a message scribbled on it. It read: “You deserve to die for doing politics and working for BJP at this young age”. 

4. Dulal Kumar

Thirty-two years old and full of dreams, that is how villagers described Dulal Kumar, who was an active member of the BJP's OBC Morcha in Balarampur — a place from where TMC was wiped out during the rural polls.

One morning in June 2018, his body was found hanging from an electric transformer. Similar script unfolded where the BJP blamed the TMC and the latter denied. The BJP president Amit Shah himself tweeted, “Distressed to know about yet another killing of BJP karyakarta Dulal Kumar in Balrampur, West Bengal. This continued brutality and violence in the land of West Bengal is shameful and inhuman". A Criminal Investigation Department probe was ordered, but that was too little a consolation for Kumar’s family.

5. Gurupada Mahato

After Trilochan Mahato and Dulal Kumar, the Trinamool had claimed in July last year that BJP has hacked one of their own to death. Gurupada Mahato was found hanging from a tree in Bankura district of West Bengal. His family had blamed the BJP for this.

As Haradhan’s body is taken to the cremation ground, the resolute faces of his family tell Bengal’ brutal story. Far from the noisy TV debates and high-octane political roadshows, a lethal realpolitik is playing out in the state’s tumultuous hinterland.