People's Democracy

Body Of A Child Or Burnt Synthetic Pipe!?

MUCH noise had been made in the first week of April over the alleged ‘discovery’ and unearthing of the ‘body of a murdered child’ at Sonachura village at Nandigram. That was the time when the corporate media was trying desperately to drum up the waning support for the Trinamul Congress-Naxalite-SUCI combine and looking for suitable ‘evidence’ against ‘CPI(M)’s misdeeds.’

The ‘body of a child’ was ‘discovered’ in the courtyard of the burnt out house of the murdered CPI(M) worker Shankar Samanta who had been burnt alive there. Dozen-odd TV cameras rolled and the viewers were treated to the sight of a bit a blackened material that was held aloft amidst much breast-beating and proclaimed by the local Trinamul Congress MLA as ‘one of the children brutally done away with by the CPI(M) workers on March 14 when the police had fired to disperse a big, armed and violent crowd.

LIES AND SLANDERS

The TV channels started to show the ‘act’ of the burnt out material being picked up, and bagged, and then taken for forensic examination repeatedly, to mournful music for weeks on end. A poet of a certain political persuasion started to call for the ‘head of at least five CPI(M) workers every morning as a bounden duty of all citizens.’ 

A few other ‘intellectuals’ and TV anchors went ahead to declare with a great deal of conviction and at regular intervals that very soon, tons of women’s wear would be unearthed from the area. One daily discovered in the burnt material, ‘at least three pieces of bones.’ Another ran a four-column headline about the unearthing of a half-burnt body from the ‘house of a CPI(M) leader.’ Yet another noted that not one but two ‘rotting’ bodies had been dug up.

Finally the forensic report revealed that the burnt material was nothing but a bit of synthetic piping that people often use for water connection, and the pipe had been burnt up along with the large portions of the house of Comrade Shankar Samanta when the entire enclosure including the haystack was set on fire by Trinamul Congress and Naxalite killers and Comrade Shankar burnt alive. 

The corporate media especially the TV channels have maintained a stoical silence over the latest development. We have no doubt that the print media would follow suit. Truth is something that these worthies are mortally afraid to confront.