WEST BENGAL

Subversive Groups Step Up Activities

Land Mines, Hand Gun Found In Midnapore-Bound Bus

We Will Foil These Designs: Buddhadeb 

Various subversive groups have stepped up their activities in the state of West Bengal with an intention to create violence. The Bengal police stumbled upon a package containing several fused up, ready to blow, land mines on a bus (registration number WB 11A 0443) at the long distance terminal adjacent to the Howrah station on October 6.  In another incident, the police nabbed a suspected Laskar militant at the Sealdah railway station on October 8. Simultaneously the KLO-ULFA combine in the north and the PWG-MCC alliance in the south have increased their attacks on the Left cadre.

Budhadeb Bhattacharjee, chief minister, has made it clear that all steps necessary will be taken to foil the nefarious designs of these subversive groups. He said this while addressing a big rally in Debra, in Midnapore district on October 6.

WAS BUDDHA THE TARGET?

 The bus, in which a packet containing fused up, ready-to-use land mines was found, was bound for Nandigram near Debra in Midnapore.  This discovery was all the more important because a day later Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee was to address a mass meeting at Debra.

During a routine search, a police team discovered an unclaimed parcel lying in one of the luggage racks inside the bus.  When the police found that there was no claimant of the luggage, they unwrapped it and found four live land mines inside the parcel.  The land mines were “live” in the sense they had been fused up and were “ready-to-use.”  The police also found a loaded country-made six-chamber revolver in the parcel.

The police questioned the passengers of the bus as well as the driver and the conductor but were not able to pin point guilt in any manner. The police informed the Army whose anti-mine personnel came and defused the explosives.

  is recalled that the concerned long distance bus terminal has acquired notoriety by way of functioning as a haven for gunrunners.  In February earlier this year, the police had uncovered a large cache of arms from the terminal.  A month later, the police recovered a couple of handguns from the same place.

LASKAR TERRORIST INTERROGATED

 The Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of the police arrested a suspected Laskar-e Taiba (LeT) terrorist at the Sealdah Railway station right in the center of Kolkata on October 8.  The police believe that the person taken into custody, Fazl-e Karim, may also have connection with the al-Qaeda outfit.

  Acting on a tip-off, the CID officers had assembled at the Sealdah station and as soon as the Jammu-Tawi express entered the station, they clambered abroad and made contact with another team of CID officers who had been shadowing Karim from the Gumah junction.  Karim was identified from photographs and the police overwhelmed him after a brief grapple.

The police are not sure about the exact motive of Karim but it is widely believed that he had come to Kolkata either to organise acts of sabotage or to utilise the metropolis as a transit point to go somewhere else.  The Bengal police have kept the central intelligence agencies informed about the arrest.  Karim has been remanded to police custody and senior police officials are interrogating him.

Following the incident, security has been tightened across Bengal, especially in strategically important places like airports, railway stations, government buildings, and popular recreational spots.

ATTEMPTS SHALL BE FOILED: BUDDHADEB

  Addressing a huge rally at Debra in west Midnapore district on October 6, Bengal chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee said that the forces of reaction were engaged in adopting newer tactics to destabilise the political situation in the state. 

With the people consistently rejecting the tenets of communalism, said the chief minister, the forces of disruption were taking to raising slogans of separatism, and they were seeking to uproot the Left Front government if they could. 

“The people,” declared Bhattacharjee, “shall foil these heinous attempts which are also aimed at disrupting the process of ongoing development of the state economy under a Left Front government.”  He was speaking to the people of Palasi village in Debra where he also participated in the foundation-laying ceremony of Bengal Dairy.

The people of Bengal, said Bhattacharjee, “have seen development taking place in the rural areas and the urban locales with the agricultural base of the state utilised to the full to organise a fresh spurt of industrial growth.”  In the gloom of the economic crisis that shrouded the country thanks to the anti-people policies of the BJP-led union government, Bengal continued to grow economically on a firm foundation of politico-social stability. 

The forces of disorder have organised the recent spate of armed assaults in a calculated manner, on the CPI(M), in particular, and the Left Front in general, to sabotage the situation, said Bhattacharjee. 

“We in the administration,” concluded the chief minister, “shall deal with the forces like the KLO-ULFA combine in the north and the PWG-MCC alliance in the south firmly—and we declare that no one should be allowed to try and strike at the progress achieved in Bengal under the Left Front government over the past 25 years.”

Also addressing the meeting was the minister for animal resource development, Anis-ur Rehman who described the dairy development project to be set up as a joint venture with one-third share capital each assigned to the state government-run Milk Federation, the district-level Milk Union, and a private sector enterprise.  The product-mix of the unit will be Rs 10 crore. When on-stream, the unit will be able to process one lakh litre of milk, and manufacture a wide range of dairy products.

IDENTITY CARDS FOR BORDER DISTRICTS

The Bengal Left Front government has decided to issue identity cards for people living in the districts that abut on the international border with Bangladesh and Bhutan.  Bengal possesses ten such border districts.  District magistrates have been asked to initiate the process in consultation with the superintendents of police and the Border Security Force (BSF) authorities.

The border districts present a special problem, especially in terms of infiltration with the associated issue of law-and-order.  The lengthy border with Bangladesh, and with Bhutan, needs to be patrolled by a minimum of thirty-four battalions of the BSF.  In practice, the BJP-led government has, in its wisdom, chosen to deploy only twenty-two battalions.

The Bengal LF government has also undertaken to put up wire-mesh fencing of the border areas and the effort is in progress.  However, thanks to the nature of the work, it has proved to be a slow and painstaking process.

Chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee had a meeting with the district magistrates and the top echelons of the police officialdom at the Writers’ Buildings on October 7 to finalise these issues.  Bhattacharjee also asked the police to be on alert during the Durga Puja festival and to ensure that untoward events were not allowed to occur.

In the same meeting, Bhattacharjee asked the district magistrates to go once again through the list of below-the-poverty-line-people (BPL) so that there are no lapses in the preparation of the multi-purpose green cards which would be issued to the members of the BPL group.