An out of work agricultural labourer took his own life by hanging himself at Singur in Hooghly district in the early hours on Saturday, prompting Trinamool Congress chief Mamta Banerjee to call an hour's rasta roko in West Bengal on Monday.
The 37-year-old labourer Srikanta Shee hanged himself from a guava tree in the compound of his house at Gopalnagar-Sonapara at around 2 am, Officer-in-Charge of Singur police station Priyabrata Bakshi said.
Banerjee, who went to the bereaved family's house at Gopalnagar-Sonapara, said this was the seventh death at Singur.
"The state government is busy playing middle man for big business. Does it have time for the dispossessed?" she asked.
She handed over Rs 5,000 to Shee's family.
She said that Monday's 'rasta roko' would be to protest Shee's death and against the finding of a body at Park Circus in Kolkata.
TC leader Rabindranath Bhattacharya claimed Shee was not getting work after land was acquired for the Tata Motors small car project.
He also alleged that Shee's cow had strayed into the Tata Motors project site on Friday and he was not allowed to enter when he went there.
The OC confirmed that Shee's cow had strayed into the project area.
Communist Party of India-Marxist zonal committee secretary Srikanta Chatterjee said that Shee used to work in a saw mill of late and was very irregular. Poverty and a wayward lifestyle had pushed him to a state of depression, he said.
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