People's Democracy

Maoists Kill Police Personnel At Belpahari

B Prasant

As the elections approach, the opposition in Bengal, suitably abetted by the corporate media, has been known to escalate violence chiefly for the purpose of striking terror in the minds of the population.  This has been an old if grisly manoeuvre, and a look back at the run up to the various polls held in Bengal especially from 1977 would bear out the fact of the vile attempts made by the dispirited opposition of the reactionary right and the sectarian left to disrupt the electoral scene.

Thus, the Maoists’ attack on a police convoy well into the afternoon of 27 February at Belpahari, a tourist spot in Midnapore west, was not really an exceptional or unexpected development.  The weeks preceding have seen the Maoists attack social infrastructure in the district including schools, health centres, roads, bridges, and tourist bungalows. 

They have also robbed banks and snatched rifles from isolated police outposts.  Recently, two disillusioned women cadres of the Maoists after surrendering to the police narrated the terrible frustration that the Maoist cadres were experiencing after their long stretches in the jungles and the killing sprees.

The three police personnel who were killed were travelling in a convoy on their way back from the Velaidiha village where they had conducted a health camp.  The last vehicle of the five-vehicle convoy was targeted and blown up using a very powerful landmine that was triggered by remote control.  A villager travelling in the vehicle after participating in the health campo, too, died in the blast.  Four other police personnel received serious injuries in the head and the torso.

Anil Biswas condemned the incident and said that terror could never beget any form of success as the Maoists claimed.  Describing the attack as cowardly and called upon the democratic-minded people of Bengal to be vociferous in their condemnation of the murderous assault.  In an exercise that is reprehensible but understandable, the Ananda Bazaar Patrika has gleefully headlined the news of the killing as ‘revenge of the Maoists.’  Beneath the garish headline, however, the report leaves to vague speculation as to what was being actually ‘avenged.’(INN)