Bholanath Ghosh, a key witness in the case against arrested TMC leader Sheikh Shahjahan of Sandeshkhali, was severely injured in a road accident on Monday while on his way to testify before a court in a different case against him. His family has alleged foul play.
A ten-wheeler truck hit Ghosh’s car, killing his younger son and the driver, while Ghosh remains critically injured. According to the police, after the crash, the truck driver fled.
Ghosh’s elder son Biswajit claimed that the truck tried to kill his father under instructions from Shahjahan. Ghosh, once a TMC worker and a close aide of Shahjahan, later became a key witness in a case against Shahjahan.
Biswajit said, “They had threatened to kill my father earlier. This is not an accident — 100 per cent murder. Shahjahan’s order was carried out by Sabita Roy and Muslim Sheikh,” he said. Roy is the president of the Najat Panchayat Samiti while Sheikh is the vice-president. Sheikh denied the allegation, calling it a lie.
The police have initiated a probe to ascertain the allegations levelled by Ghosh’s family. A senior police officer said, “We are not sure if it was an accident. We are probing every angle. We are putting more emphasis on why the collision occurred where there is no CCTV coverage and how the driver fled the spot.”
What happened
Initially believed to be a head-on collision, it later emerged that the ten-wheeler allegedly rammed a side of Ghosh’s vehicle on the Basanti Highway. The police said that while Basanti Highway is accident-prone, the stretch near the Boiramari petrol pump in Najat police station limits, where the crash occurred, is not marked as such. The road there is straight and wide.
Residents living nearby claimed the truck came from behind, rammed the car, pushed it forward, and hurled it into a roadside ditch. The four-wheeler was crushed, trapping all three occupants inside. Witnesses reportedly said the truck driver fled the spot.
A section of villagers, including Ghosh’s family, have alleged that the accident was orchestrated. They cited past incidents in which witnesses were attacked in Sandeshkhali, allegedly under Shahjahan’s instructions from the jail. They said the crash and the death of Ghosh’s son were “not a coincidence”.
BJP leader Sajal Ghosh alleged, “It was a planned murder and not an accident. It was an attempt to disguise a murder as an accident. Let there be an impartial investigation.”
Shahjahan, known locally as the “terror of Sandeshkhali,” was arrested by the CBI in connection with the attack on an ED team that had gone to question him in January 2024. The attack drew national attention to Sandeshkhali, a remote area in North 24 Parganas where Shahjahan wielded considerable influence.