Burdwan (WB): The face of a statue of India’s first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru was found blackened in West Bengal’s Katwa town on Saturday, the Police said.
The Congress has trained guns on the BJP, but the saffron party denied it was behind the incident, PTI reported.
The statue at Telephone Maidan at Katwa town in East Burdwan district with its face blackened was found this morning by the locals, who then informed the police about it.
Congress workers protested in front of the police station, demanding those behind the act be arrested.
A complaint was lodged by them, the police said, adding investigation into the incident was underway.
Chairman of the Trinamool Congress-run Katwa municipality Rabindranath Chattopadhyay condemned the blackening of Nehru’s statue and said it was cleaned by the civic body later in the day.
Katwa Town Congress secretary Subhashish Samanta has alleged that BJP workers were behind the incident, while the saffron party’s rural district secretary Sandip Nandy has said the party had no role in it.
Statues in India have come under attack recently. Communist leader Lenin’s statue was razed to the ground allegedly by the BJP workers after the saffron party ousted the Left front in the state earlier this month. The sculptures of Ramasamy Periyar and B R Ambedkar were also vandalised on the following days in Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh respectively.
A bust of Jan Sangh founder Syama Prasad Mookerjee was vandalised on March 7 in Kolkata by seven persons, including a woman.
(With PTI inputs)