Bengal BJP youth wing leader Raju Sarkar dies of cardiac arrest

KOLKATA: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)'s West Bengal Yuva Morcha vice-president Raju Sarkar died on Monday evening following a cardiac arrest.
Sarkar complained of chest pain after he got engaged in a heated argument with some of the Morcha members.
He was attending the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM)’s state conference at the party office at Hastings in Kolkata.
"It is shocking to hear about his untimely death. He was appointed as the vice-president of the Yuva Morcha’s Bengal unit around a year ago. It is a loss to the Morcha,” Bengal BJP president Dilip Ghosh said.
Trinamool Congress, however, raised questions about the series of events that led to his death.

Sarkar, close to Mukul Roy, switched sides from the TMC after Roy joined the BJP in November 2017.

Last year, he was appointed as the vice-president when the Bengal unit of Morcha went through a series of leadership changes.
He had resigned from the post when BJYM’s Bengal unit president Saumitra Khan stepped down after the cabinet reshuffle.
According to sources, Sarkar attended the closed-door meeting with three district committees on Monday and went out in the afternoon.
He came back when most of the Yuva Morcha leaders had left the Hastings office.
He allegedly got involved into an altercation with some of the members and that resulted in a heated exchange of words.
“I am in Delhi at present and not aware of the details. I heard that he got involved in an altercation. He complained of chest pain suddenly and was rushed to a hospital,” Ghosh said.
Agnimitra Paul, head of the party’s women wing, said he was taken to the SSKM Hospital, but he could not got a bed at the ICU.
“We had to shift him to a nursing home after that and he died while being taken there,” Paul said.
Sources, however, indicated that Sarkar, not in tune with a section of the BJP leaders and he was in talks with some of the leaders in the Trinamool Congress even before Roy had quit the BJP.
“He had exchanged WhatsApp messages with some of our leaders when he got disillusioned with the ways of the party,” said a TMC leader.
“He was in touch with me for some time and I could feel his dissatisfaction with the party. We should know what exactly happened on the fourth floor of the Hastings party office on Monday evening. The death raises some questions, especially, in the backdrop of his difference of opinion with a senior BJP leader,” said Trinamool Congress spokesperson Kunal Ghosh.
Lalbazar police said they had not got any complaint in this regard yet.
“We will wait for the doctor's opinion if we need to carry out a postmortem," said a joint commissioner of police.