The 12-hour dawn-to-dusk truck strike to protest against the killing of a forty-two-year-old truck driver, Abodh Kumar, by a mob in Hirapur near Asansol hit the supply of vegetables in the city on Thursday.

Yesterday, an angry mob had killed the driver by setting him on fire after his truck crushed a twelve-year-old student to death. Following this, members of truck associations of Panagarh, Asansol and Ondal had called the strike.

The prices of vegetables shot up in all the major wholesale markets in the city, including the Park Circus market, Nokur Babur Bazaar in Sealdah and the Burrabazar market.

“Vegetables like potatoes, carrots and onions come from the interiors of Burdwan. The strike has affected the supply of these vegetables to the market,” said Abdullah Ansari, joint secretary of the Park Circus market.

“Normally, we send eight truckloads of local vegetable products to Burdwan every night. But owing to the strike, we have decided to restrict the number of the trips to four,” said Moloy Tarafdar, a wholesale vegetable dealer at Nokur Babur Bazaar.

Meanwhile, the Asansol police have arrested 23 people in connection with the Thursday’s incident of mob violence. While two of them have been sent to jail custody, the remaining has been remanded in seven days of police custody.