Sandeshkhali, a village in North 24 Parganas district of West Bengal, has been at the centre of a political storm for nearly a month and has witnessed unprecedented protests over allegations of sexual abuse by scores of women against a local Trinamool Congress leader.
Rescue officials confirmed casualties in the incident, claiming to have already recovered 5 bodies from the heap of debris where the cracker manufacturing unit once stood.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Thursday received wholehearted support from a group of women from the troubled Sandeshkhali area who met her after a Trinamool Congress rally in Kolkata, party sources said.
The state declared only 4834 sensitive booths on which only CAPFs are deployed but actually, there were more sensitive polling booths, DIG Guleria said.
The repolling started at 7 am amid tight security with four central forces personnel deployed in each booth, besides state police. Till 11 am, 10.9 per cent voter turnout was recorded.
The ED officers are conducting raids at 15 places in the state during the day and Sajahan's house is one of them, an officer said.
Another explosion "linked to illegal firecrackers" took place in West Bengal on Monday, the third such blast within a span of just seven days.
"My father and uncles are no more, our family is devastated," said an inconsolable Avijit, the son of Haran.
'The time has come for all those believe in a democratic India to stand up and be counted and to make a choice.'
The Trinamool Congress supremo, who reached Khadikul village in this area, 11 days after the blast, also said the incident could have been averted if the state had received proper intelligence inputs.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Monday said that the Bharatiya Janata Party might conduct the Lok Sabha polls in December itself, claiming that all choppers have been booked by the saffron party for campaigning.
Tension was palpable in the area, and a large police contingent was deployed to prevent any further flare-up.
A team of CBI officers reached his residence in south Kolkata's Chetla area along with a large contingent of central forces in the morning, officials said.
Three persons, including two supporters of the Indian Secular Front (ISF), were killed and several policemen injured in West Bengal's South 24 Parganas district as a clash broke out outside a centre where counting of votes for rural polls was going on, police said on Wednesday.
'We cried our hearts out as we saw our huts going underwater. It was hard to believe that I was fast asleep at the same spot just 15-20 minutes ago'
The court directed the State Election Commission, the state government and the central government to file affidavits dealing with all the allegations made in three petitions alleging malpractices.
The case has been handed over to the state CID from Baguiati police station under Bidhannagar police commissionerate, the official said.
Violence had rocked West Bengal's rural polls on Saturday, leaving 15 people dead while ballot boxes were vandalised, ballot papers torched, and bombs thrown at rivals in several places.
This takes the total number of apprehended persons in this case to nine, a police officer said.
The Calcutta high court has asked the State Election Commission to explore the possibility of postponing the civic polls to four municipal corporations by four to six weeks in view of a surge in COVID-19 cases in West Bengal.
West Bengal Governor Dr CV Ananda Bose on Friday said that political violence in the state must come to an end, after visiting Bhangore, where supporters of two political parties clashed a day before leaving three dead.
The system moved north-northeastwards at 20 kmph in the last six hours and is over west-central Bay of Bengal, 90 km from Gopalpur, 120 km from Puri and 210 km from Paradip, the weather office said in its 11.30 am bulletin.
A 12-year-old girl was killed after she came in contact with a dangling live wire that got torn during the squall in Botanical Garden area in Howrah city, the police said.
"Fake voter and Aadhaar cards have been seized from his possession. He is being interrogated. We are trying to find out how and when he entered into India," an official said.
All the four were found guilty of "conspiracy" to wage war against the government of India and sentenced to 10 years rigorous imprisonment.
The player, a resident of Barrackpore town in West Bengal's North 24 Parganas district, allegedly forged documents, like Permanent Resident of Tripura Certificate (PRTC) and Ration Card, to play for Tripura, they said.
North Zone IG Neeraj Kumar Gupta said the man, who was a beggar, is suspected to have done the act "due to mental trauma", as he could not get any money from begging in the state.
The court directed the state police to transfer all records and CCTV footage relating to the matter to the central government within two weeks.
A four-member team of the Union home ministry, tasked with looking into reasons for the post-poll violence in West Bengal, met Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar at the Raj Bhavan.
Less than a week after miscreants hurled bombs at BJP MP Arjun Singh's residence in West Bengal's North 24 Parganas, similar explosions were reported outside his home on Tuesday morning.
Several BJP leaders including its Bengal minder Kailash Vijayvargiya suffered injuries, sources in the saffron party claimed.
Security forces were maintaining a strict vigil across West Bengal in view of Hanuman Jayanti celebrations on Thursday, officials said.
A 31-year-old woman from Kuwait who had arrived in India for treatment and went missing from Kolkata last month has been spotted in neighbouring Bangladesh this week, a police officer said in Kolkata on Thursday.
A Trinamool Congress legislator on Sunday threatened to not support any bill tabled by the government in the West Bengal Assembly in the future and abstain from voting in the upcoming Rajya Sabha polls in the state if 'atrocities' on his loyalists allegedly by a rival faction continued, even as the Bharatiya Janata Party said the collapse of the Mamata Banerjee government was just a matter of time.
The court noted that no appreciable steps have been taken ever since an order was passed by it on June 13 to deploy central forces in sensitive areas for the poll process.
Over 1.03 crore voters will decide the political fate of 306 candidates in this phase.
A drone from Skye Air Mobility on Tuesday covered an aerial distance of 104 km in West Bengal to deliver a medicine consignment of Flipkart Health, the longest commercial delivery using an unmanned vehicle in the state, a company statement said on Tuesday. The drone took off from Flipkart's Baruipur hub in South 24 Parganas and delivered medicines at the Healthbuddy Matangini in the state's Purba Medinipur district, it said. The distance between the two places is 185 km by road, and it takes about four-five hours to cover by the surface transport.
Mamata asserted that she will never allow the implementation of CAA in West Bengal.
The entire coastal region of Odisha has been experiencing rainfall since Friday night.
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