Police said the gun-wielding man, who has now been arrested, shouted at the students while threatening to kill them in West Bengal’s Malda district.
New Delhi: A man, brandishing a gun, barged into a packed classroom and allegedly threatened to kill the students and the class teacher in West Bengal’s Malda district. The incident took place at Muchia Anchal Chandra Mohan High School in Old Malda.
Police said the gun-wielding man, who has now been arrested, shouted at the students while threatening to kill them. “The man managed to enter the school and barge into the room where Class-8 students were seated. He was holding a gun and shouting at the students, allegedly threatening to kill them and the class teacher,” an officer was quoted a saying by news agency PTI.
Panic gripped the students as the unidentified man brandished the gun and started yelling, a senior police officer said. The man kept on yelling “would shoot if someone shoots him” before he was overpowered by bystanders and police personnel and arrested, the officer said, adding, a pistol, two bottles containing some liquid and a knife were seized from his possession.
#WestBengal has now become the #USA. The same thing happened in old Malda today, A gunmen entered in school like #America. Sometimes ago in West Bengal some criminals bombed the roof of children’s school. #TMC says he is #BJP man BJP says TMC.#GunMenAtSchool pic.twitter.com/Xyz7kCAQob
— Vijay (@Vijay99611168) April 26, 2023
Anxious guardians rushed to the school and made a beeline outside the educational institution, even as classes were suspended following the incident, police said.
The bespectacled man claimed he acted in this way, as his son and wife have been missing since a year, and he wanted to exert pressure on the administration to take note of it.
The man has been identified by bystanders as Vallabh. According to his neighbours, the man in his mid-40s, is separated from his wife and his child lives with her.
Mamata Banerjee reacts to Bengal classroom gun incident
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee who was holding an administrative meeting in Kolkata at the time, came out to compliment the police for averting what is being seen as a potential school hostage crisis.
Lauding the police for disarming and arresting a man, Banerjee alleged that the entire matter may have been a plot. “Case of the man brandishing a gun at Malda school may not be an act of lunacy,” the chief minister told a press conference at the state secretariat.