KOLKATA: CPM leader and a former lawmaker of Rajya Sabha Ananda Das was shot dead allegedly by Trinamool activists at Bolpur Block in Birbhum district of West Bengal on Tuesday night, stoking up tensions between the state’s ruling party and its inveterate opposition rival.

To protest the killing of their leading comrade, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) called a ‘bandh (strike) in Bolpur Mahakuma for Wednesday.

District police sources said a band of Trinamool Congress activists, spurred by the news that CPM activists were beating one of their colleagues, attacked the CPM zonal office in Nanur bus-stand area in the evening.

The armed politicos ransacked the zonal office, situated near the residence of Ananda Das.

“The unruly Trinamool activists called Das out of his house and shot him pointblank, leaving him fatally injured,” police said, quoting a spot account of the deadly attack.

“The attackers also vandalized some shops and left the place blasting bombs,” they said.

Local people rushed Das to Kolkata SKM Hospital where the doctors declared him dead.

The news of the killing of CMP leader sent a wave of panic through the whole of Bolpur subdivision.

CPM state secretary Biman Basu alleged Ananda Das was killed “in a planed way”.

BDST: 0935, 30 June 2010