People's Democracy

CRPF Continues Its Pressure

Tactics At Nandigram

LOOKING from very close quarters at post-governor’s-visit Nandigram villages has served emphatically to confirm, and indeed deepen, our earlier suspicions about the behaviour of the CRPF units in deployment there, and their working in very close cooperation of the local Trinamul Congress jotdars (rich peasants).

We shall cite a few more instances of CRPF intransigence.  At Bahadurpur, the CRPF intruded into the household of the father-son duo of Indian Army officers, Ashis and Subhasis Jana, sat themselves down uncalled for, and started to grill Ashis Jana’s wife (her husband and son are on duty long distances away) dropping hints about the Janas’ ‘political connections.’  Scared and fearful, she left the house with a semblance of luggage for her in-law’s house as soon as the CRPF men had gone.  

At Garupara and adjoining Maheshpur, CRPF units unlawfully confined three CPI(M) workers, Ashok Das, Ashok Patra, and Sahadeb Das for a long time, terrorising them with harsh interrogation, robbed them of the money they had on them, and only then released them in the middle of the night.  The Khodambari area has become a spot of sheer panic for the villagers.  No one ventures out after eight in the evening as by then prowling CRPF assault passers by with impunity, threaten them, and end up by stripping them of valuables. Cell phones are particularly lucrative ‘seizures,’ we were told.

DISCRIMINATION

On the other hand, despite appeals, all the assassins of the late comrade Shankar Samanta like the Sheets, the Mondals, and the Sau’s roam freely, as does the lynchpin of the gruesome killing, the history-sheeter Abdus Samad.  Recently, two suspected Maoists were allowed to walk free even after their whereabouts and antecedents had been communicated to the CRPF. 

When the villagers of Sonachura informed the CRPF that there were two illegally owned and operated guns in the household of the Trinamul Congress subaltern Pravangshu Majhi, no heed was paid.  At the end, the Nandigram police had to come and recover the guns: Majhi had by then melted away in the more populous areas of the locality.

The people of Nandigram are getting more and more frustrated with the kind of policy the CRPF appears to have set its mind on to pursue.  This sort of development of the mindset is hardly conducive to the process of normalcy returning to Nandigram. 

The Bengal governor assured a group of agitated Trinamul Congress workers just before he left for Kolkata: ‘CRPF aachhen, thaakben’ (the CRPF is here to stay).  Neither the Bengal CPI(M) nor the Bengal Left Front government has a problem with that, but the Nandigram villagers are starting to get restless.

(B P)