GUNMEN on motorbikes shot dead a political aide of India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in West Bengal days after the party swept the state elections, police said on Thursday.
Prime minister Narendra Modi's BJP won 207 of the 294 assembly seats in the eastern state of more than 100 million people on Monday, marking its first victory in West Bengal.
Chandranath Rath, 41, a close aide of West Bengal BJP chief Suvendu Adhikari, was shot dead late on Wednesday near his home in Kolkata.
Adhikari, the leader of the opposition in the state assembly and tipped to become the next chief minister, called it a "cold-blooded murder".
Police said motorbikes blocked Rath's vehicle before attackers opened fire with around a dozen shots, hitting him multiple times in the chest.
"The shooting happened at about 11 pm on Wednesday -- the bikes that stopped Rath's car have been seized," West Bengal police chief Siddh Nath Gupta told AFP.
"The bikes had fake registration numbers, and we are looking for the assailants."
Pritam Sengupta, a doctor at Apollo Hospital, told AFP that Rath was "brought dead with multiple bullet injuries in his chest."
The killing takes the number of people killed since the election results were announced on Monday to at least five.
West Bengal had been ruled by Mamata Banerjee since 2011.
Banerjee, leader of the All India Trinamool Congress (TMC), also lost her seat in the polls and has rejected the results.
Analysts say the BJP's victory in the Bengali-speaking state is among its most significant since Modi first became prime minister in 2014, extending the party's reach beyond the Hindi-speaking regions of north and central India.
The killing has added to tensions in the state, with the BJP and TMC accusing each other over the deaths reported since the results.
"It was a planned murder," BJP West Bengal president Samik Bhattacharya said.
"This is expected from Trinamool Congress," he alleged. "They are responsible for this death."
The TMC denied involvement in the shooting and accused the BJP of targeting its supporters.
"We strongly condemn the brutal murder of Chandranath Rath," the party said in a statement, adding that it also condemned attacks on TMC members "allegedly carried out by BJP-backed miscreants".
The BJP said it will swear in its leader as chief minister on Saturday.
