The recovery of the body caused anger to spill into the streets, with a mob vandalizing roads, shops and a local train station. A young man was beaten to death by the crowd; Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari has since said he was innocent.

Several police officers were injured and vehicles damaged while trying to contain the mob. The police have registered three cases and arrested 40 people so far.

The area remains tense, with a ban on public gatherings and a heavy police and paramilitary deployment to maintain order.

The unrest poses a huge challenge to the BJP, which came to power in West Bengal for the first time in May, campaigning heavily on the issue of making the state safe for women.

Analysts say one of the main reasons three-term chief minister Mamata Banerjee lost the election was growing concerns about women’s safety and her government’s mishandling of the rape and murder of a doctor at a government hospital.

This case has also been embroiled in political controversy and threatens to acquire religious connotations, since the victim was Muslim while the detainees are Hindus.

The house of Sushant Mondal, a local BJP leader, was attacked and ransacked by a mob who accused him of helping the suspects. He denied the allegations, saying they were “false” and that he had, in fact, “helped catch the perpetrators.”

To contain public anger, Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari visited the village on Tuesday and met the victim’s family.

“Our government is committed to stopping any such incident in the state. The police are doing what needs to be done. The family has spoken to me, they have lost their beloved daughter. I think they are satisfied talking to me.”

Less than 24 hours later, Prabhash Mondal was murdered in a “police encounter”.

In a statement on Wednesday morning, Baruipur police said Mondal had been taken to the pond to recreate the crime scene as part of the investigation, but he tried to snatch a police officer’s gun and opened fire on them.

The police retaliated and fired shots, hitting him. The injured defendant was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead, according to the release.

Although no allegations had been proven against Mondal, his mother appeared to have disowned her son and refused to accept his body.

“Two police officers came to my house. I had just woken up. They told me that my son had died and asked me if I wanted to go to the hospital. I told them I couldn’t because my husband was sick,” she told news agency ANI.

“I said: do what you want. I have no objection. My son has been punished for what he did. I will not accept his body. I will not even take his body home,” she added.

However, opposition politicians and human rights activists have questioned the killing, saying it went against the rule of law.

Ranjit Sur of the Association for the Protection of Democratic Rights called the matter “suspicious.”

Sur said the story of police encounters in many states of the country is almost the same: the accused tries to escape by snatching the police gun and then dies in the encounter.

In 2019, in a similar incident, police killed four men accused of gang-raping and murdering a young woman in Hyderabad in an encounter.