Daspur (West Midnapore) May 10:The mysterious “suicide” of a 30-year-old Block Development Officer in West Bengal who blew the whistle on corruption by the CPM-led panchayat in the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme has come as a severe embarrassment to the state government ahead of Panchayat elections beginning tomorrow.

On April 8, according to police records obtained by The Sunday Express, the body of Kallol Sur was found hanging from the ceiling fan of his two-room house adjoining the BDO complex at Daspur II in West Midnapur district. The death was called a suicide by local officials but Sur’s 72-year-old father Dilip Sur is knocking on all doors asking for a probe.

Yesterday, he met Chief Secretary Amit Kiran Deb claiming his son had told him about “immense political pressure” he was under following the complaints he filed. The father has alleged that the local administration didn’t hand over his son’s body to him but “hurriedly cremated it.” The post-mortem report, too, hasn’t been given to the father.

What led to his death isn’t clear but police records, FIRs and official complaints obtained by The Sunday Express make it clear that Sur brought several powerful local leaders — of both the CPM and the Trinamool — under the scanner for alleged corruption in a slew of schemes, including NREGA, flood relief and illegal felling of trees.

Consider the sequence of events:

• On January 6 this year, three months into his job, Sur filed an FIR with the Daspur police station with the police when 10 poor villagers in Daspur Block - II complained that they had not got their wages as per the NREGA. They alleged they received payments for just two days while the job supervisor, appointed by the Panchayat Pradhan, got them to sign the muster roll for seven days. After his probe, Sur complained: “The Pradhan of Nischintapur is held responsible for the offence equally as the said job supervisor forced the paymaster to pay less than what was stated in the muster roll.”

• Sur’s FIR named CPM panchayat pradhan Kartik Mondal and job supervisor Ajoy Bhowmik, also a local CPM leader.

• Both were arrested and when the case reached the magistrate’s court, the Panchayat Pradhan and the job supervisor were fined Rs 5,000. The court ordered the BDO to collect the fine and distribute it among the ten “aggrieved labourers.”

• Local CPM leaders, angry at the BDO’s “audacity,” claimed the BDO was acting at the behest of the Trinamool Congress. They complained that some Trinamool Congress leaders of a neighbouring village in the same block had siphoned off money meant for reconstruction of huts/ homes after floods. After investigating their allegations, Sur promptly filed another case, this one against three Trinamool Panchayat members of Benai.

• Now it was the turn of Trinamool to harass the BDO. On March 24, they picketed his office for five hours asking him to withdraw the case but Sur refused.

• Five days later, the local CPM surrounded his office, held demonstrations alleging that he was a “Trinamool broker.”

Days later, on April 2, Sur went home to Kolkata complaining of illness. Sur was advised bed rest for two weeks but his immediate superior, Sub Divisional Officer (SDO) Ghatal Gautam Majumdar rejected his leave.

• Sur returned to work on April 4, this time accompanied by his worried father who went back to Kolkata on April 7.

• The next day, Kallol Sur was found dead.

His father, in a letter to West Midnapore’s police chief, quoted his son as saying: “My SDO thinks I will give up my job and will leave this place being unable to bear his torture but he does not know me, I will never give up and I will break the evil nexus between the SDO, panchayat, and police...He has actually paid the price of being honest.”

When contacted, Mondal, the accused in the NREGA defalcation case said: “I saw right at the beginning that the BDO was mad...It was because of him that I had to pay Rs 5000 out of my pocket. He is dead, but I don’t know when I will be able to shake off this case.”

State Home Secretary Asok Mohan Chakrabarti said: “An Additional District Magistrate rank officer is investigating. After getting the report the government will take action.”

Said R Rajsekharan, SP of West Midnapore: “Sur was suffering from schizophrenia...our primary investigation shows it is a case of suicide.” When asked about the police cases filed by Sur against local political leaders, the SP said: “All is speculation.” Told that the court had fined the Panchayat, Rajsekharan declined to comment. Said SDO Majumdar: “An inquiry is on. I shall not comment on the issue.”

For the family, grief has been replaced by a determination to get to the truth. Dilip Sur, who retired from Jessop as an accounts assistant in 1995, has another son Ujjal Sur, 33, who is working with a company in Taiwan. He is on his way home after news of his brother’s death.

Kallol Sur’s head teacher in Tollygunge-Bangur High School in south Kolkata Monoranjan Roy said that Kallol used to be in constant touch with him. After he got the BDO’s job, Roy said, Kallol came to donate Rs 5000 for the “school’s development.” Even during his last visit on April 2, Kallol met Roy and repeated what he had told his father — that he was facing tremendous political pressure. “I have never seen any indication of an illness let alone schizophrenia,” said the teacher.

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