People's Democracy

CPI(M) Worker Killed In Midnapore West

ASSASSINS in the pay and protection of the Pradesh Congress and Trinamul Congress brutally killed Comrade Ardhendu Satpathi, secretary of the Amarda local committee of the CPI(M) at Gopiballavpore in Midnapore west on May 22.  Comrade Satpathi was also a schoolteacher.  A bandh was observed in the Gopiballavpore area on May 23 at the call of the CPI(M).

Comrade Satpathi was travelling in a motorbike and was on his way back from attending a Party meeting when the miscreants waylaid him at the Birsachak village outskirts.  An impromptu roadblock threw him of the motorbike and then the murderers set upon him.  They broke his arms before shooting him in the head at point blank range.

The killers made good their escape but the enraged villagers who came out on hearing the gunshot burnt down, in a rage, the hutments where the miscreants, known anti-socials all, would frequently take shelter.

It is recalled that miscreants had killed the previous local committee secretary of Amarda, Comrade Sasanka Nath back in November of 2001.  It is widely believed that the increasing popularity of the Party in the Gopiballavpore area, once a Naxalite den, had enraged the opposition who conspired the killing of two successive CPI(M) leaders of the locale.  The CPI(M) had called for the early arrest and appropriate punishment of the murderers who are absconding.