People's Democracy

THE CID report on the Garbeta incident is certainly going to prove embarrassing for the Trinamul Congress that kept crying "Foul!" ever since the alleged "Garbeta killings" took place in Midnapore district.

This was stated by chief minster Buddhadeb Bhattacharya on the floor of the assembly while speaking on the adjournment motion brought in by the Trinamul Congress. The motion was supported by such Pradesh Congress MLAs as are getting desperate to join Ms Mamata Banerjee’s outfit while retaining their membership of the Vidhan Sabha.

Bhattacharya urged the restless opposition worthies to hold out a little longer and then have the courage to come face to face with the reality of both the Garbeta "killings" and the murder of Trinamul Congress worker Sujata Das at Khejuri, also in Midnapore.

Bhattacharya ignored the last ditch attempt for a CBI inquiry by Pradesh Congress MLAs like Saugata Roy who are quite enamoured by the Trinamul’s disgusting antics inside and outside the house. He declared that just as the opposition MLAs despair of getting any case out of the CID, so do those in the Left Front government have even less faith in the working of the CBI as an investigating agency.

Debunking with facts the vilification campaign being indulged in by the Trinamul-BJP MLAs on the supposedly deteriorating law and order situation in Bengal, the chief minister said the crime rate had in fact gone down over the past couple of years. The following table is based on the figures provided to INN by the chief minister:

Bhattacharya was in no doubt that the spate of violence in Midnapore started with the implementation of the so-called "Panskura line" by the Trinamul Congress. Later, thanks to the bold initiative taken by the Left Front government, bipartite discussions took place and workers of all parties who were evicted forcibly from their hearth and home were allowed to go back and take up the broken threads of their lives.

The situation underwent a change for the worse, the chief minister pointed out, when Trinamul workers, on their way back from attending a meeting addressed by Ms Mamata Banerjee on January 3, chose to launch armed assaults on CPI(M) and Left Front workers. Even police officers, as it later became clear, were shot at by Trinamul workers.

Chief minister Bhattacharya then proceeded to pound the opposition benches with trenchant questions like: Who had assembled at Abdur-Rahman Mondol’s house at Chhoto Anguria on that fateful night? What were these armed men up to? Did they belong to the Trinamul Congress and to the People’s War Group? What kind of arms they had carried? What was the size of the arms cache inside Mondol’s house?

Bhattacharya commented that the studied silence maintained by Trinamul leadership in the bustle to organise the union government’s intervention in Bengal prior to the assembly polls was an important pointer to the Garbeta incident.

The chief minister was quite emphatic in his assurance that most cases of dacoity in recent times had not only been solved but nearly all the miscreants concerned had been put behind bars. He drew attention of the house to the spate of robberies in the Diamond Harbour area where, Bhattacharya pointed out, all the cases could be brought to justice.