West Bengal Food and Supplies Minister Jyotipriya Mallick on Wednesday claimed that BJP leaders had hired a Bangladeshi contract killer to assassinate him. Advertising The TMC leader filed a complaint at Gobardanga police station in North 24 Parganas district and demanded better security. Police registered an FIR against a local criminal and others. According to police, Mallick, also TMC’s North 24 Parganas president, alleged that he had been receiving threat calls from unknown numbers on his associate’s number. “Around 7 pm on May 5, one of my associates received a call from an unknown number. The caller told my associate that he is a Bangladeshi resident and wants to disclose some facts about a plot to assassinate me. But that conversation did not continue as the caller disconnected the phone,” Mallick said. Advertising “My associate received a second call around 8.50 pm on the same day from another unknown number. The caller was the same and this time the conversation was long. He told my associate that BJP candidate from Bongaon Lok Sabha constituency, Shantanu Thakur, his father, Manjulkrishna Thakur, and BJP national general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya have appointed local anti-social Debdas Mondal to make arrangements for my assassination,” he alleged. A few days ago, Shantanu was injured after his car collided with a vehicle carrying personnel of central forces in North 24 Parganas’s Jagulia area. The BJP alleged that it was a plot by the TMC to kill Shantanu before the fifth phase of polling. “We have received a complaint. A case has been lodged. Efforts are on to trace the mobile phone number,” said a senior police officer. Mallick claimed that the contract killer had been paid Rs 5 lakh as advance and another Rs 25 lakh would be paid after the mission was successful. The BJP, however, denied the allegation. “Our candidate was recently injured after his vehicle was hit. We demanded an investigation into the matter and to counter that, such stories are being cooked. He (Mallick) isn’t that important that we will invest so much of energy on all this. Our party doesn’t believe in such politics,” said BJP state president Dilip Ghosh.

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