People's Democracy

Who Killed Tapasi Malik At Singur?

B Prasant

NEW and definitive light has been shed on the murder of a young woman named Tapasi Malik. Tapasi was done away brutally nearly five months ago one early morning on December 8 and her remains stuffed in a hole within the limits of the automobile factory that is coming up at Singur. Her body was set on fire and was partially burnt. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probing the case now believes that the young woman’s father and brother might have had something to do with her murder.

Tapasi’s death had been utilised shamelessly and to the hilt by the Naxalites, the SUCI initially, then followed up by the Trinamul Congress, the Pradesh Congress, and the BJP, to try to embarrass the CPI(M) and the Bengal Left Front government.

It was alleged first that the young woman, a ‘front-ranking anti-Communist and a vocal supporter of the save agriculture committee,’ was gang-raped and then killed by CPI(M) workers. The story was later changed to her getting ‘molested and killed’ by night-guards who had found her within the perimeter of the factory walls.

The Trinamul Congress took the lead in making a huge noise about the ‘CPI(M)’s misdeeds’ and called for a Bengal bandh on December 21. The bandh proved to be a great flop. Not to be daunted, soulful and dirge-like ballads were composed and sung by the Naxalites and Maoists in memory of the ‘martyr.’

sOut-of-work writers and singers poured out fire-and-brimstone speeches condemning the ‘brutal animals called communists who would not spare a child.’ Newspaper columnists gleefully ran pages of mournful post-editorials filled with lies and artifice. Plays were composed and staged on the case, calling on the ‘people to end the rule of the Bengal Left Front.’

In the meanwhile, the Bengal LF government requested the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to take up the case, which it did. It has been an early finding of the CBI that circumstances leading to young Tapasi’s unnatural death were murky and convoluted.

The CBI officials recently spoke to an all-India English daily and said that the young woman was not killed, as claimed raucously by the Bengal opposition, as a fall-out of the rivalry of the save agricultural committee with the Left Front. The CBI has become suspicious of the statements made by Tapasi’s father Monoranjan and brother Surajit.

In all probability, the duo will be subjected to sophisticated probing techniques as narco-analysis, brain-mapping and DNA testing. The blood samples taken from the murder site apparently do not match the samples of blood collected from Monoranjan and Surajit. The father-and-son may also be subjected to a ‘lie-detector’ or ‘polygraph’ test. The CBI has no doubt that young Tapasi Malik was killed in planned manner and that the story runs much deeper than what appearances would tell.

TAPASI MALIK’S FATHER TO BE HOSTED BY TRINAMUL SUPREMO?

IS Monoranjan Malik, Tapasi Malik’s father scheduled to enjoy the hospitality of the Trinamul Congress chief, like the accused Bakhtar Mondol of the notorious Chhoto Angaria incident, which too is under probe by the Criminal Bureau of Investigation (CBI).

The moment the CBI officials suspected the father of Tapasi Malik, Monoranjan having been very liberal with the truth about the murder of the young woman, they spoke about lie detector tests and DNA probes, plus brain mapping. The effort was now seriously on, five months into the incident, about who it was that actually killed Tapasi Malik at Singur. Panic signals went abuzz to the Trinamul Congress leadership. After all, the murder of young Tapasi had been a central point in their ill-gotten campaign against the setting up of an automotive factory at Singur.

Monoranjan, touted by the Trinamul Congress and its Naxalite and SUCI backer-uppers as a member of the save agricultural land committee in fact did not own any plot of land at all. Nor he did till any land anywhere. Monoranjan was a member of the rural poor of the Singur village of Bajeymelia who eked out a living through selling fishes from a pavement stall, and he had indeed lined up before the block level offices of the state government requesting for a job. That happened before a furious quarrel had broken out in the Malik household over something young Tapasi did or did not do, and which would not please Monoranjan, and Tapasi’s brother.

A couple of days later Tapasi was found murdered and burnt (alive as the CBI officers would have one believe) within the perimeter of the automobile factory walls at Singur. Jumping into the fray with both feet firmly in place, the Naxalites and then the Trinamul Congress and the SUCI immediately took up a war-cry about Tapasi having been murdered by the CPI(M), and directly afterwards, Monoranjan and Tapasi were dubbed as leading activists of the save agricultural land committee.

The way the CBI probe has suddenly swerved into a turn has undoubtedly taken the Trinamul Congress supremo and her Naxalite-SUCI friends by a great and nasty surprise. For some days now, Monoranjan, who was at the receiving end of the lure of lucre, courtesy the Naxalites, is reported to be away from Bajeymelia village. Where has he gone? He is rumoured to be Kolkata bound. We shall not be surprised if the new abode of Monoranjan is located inside the Trinamul Congress HQ in east Kolkata. Something similar had been done in similar instances with other accused persons, like Bakhtar Mondol of Chhoti Angaria ill-fame.

Elsewhere, a film-maker who had gone to Nandigram to shoot footage of the aftermath of Trinamul Congress rampage was reportedly approached by a certain media-savvy person well-known for his presence in the ranks of the Bengal opposition (and having leanings in the ‘right’ direction), and offered Rs three lakh for shots showing ‘women of Nandigram crying in distress.’ The offer was turned down especially after the worthy had told the film director that ‘they’ would show the pictures around as part of ‘their’ Panchayat poll campaign in Bengal. In the meanwhile, the Trinamul Congress’s call for a rasta roko programme against ‘CPI(M) atrocities in Nandigram,’ proved a total failure with less than a hundred desultory Trinamul Congress workers seen in and around the Kolkata metropolitan area. The districts were bereft of their noxious presence.