People's Democracy

JHARKHANDI CRIMINALS KILL TWO CPI (M) WORKERS AT BINPUR

A gang of armed Jharkhandi goons killed two CPI (M) workers, comrades Sheikh Ashraf Ali (34) and Sheikh Aftar Ali (25) at the Singpore village in Binpur (Midnapore west)) late in the evening of 3 February. The two CPI (M) workers were on their way back to their places of residence when the Jharkhandis accosted them at a lonely and tree-shaded spot some distance from the nearest village of Andharia. The two Party workers who are in the leadership of the local unit of the DYFI had played a commendable role in organising the jatha that had taken off from Baghmundi for the Shahid Minar rally held on the same afternoon in Kolkata.

Dragging the two Party workers from the cycle they were on, the Jharkhandis shot them several times at close range and then fled using motorised transport. Fifteen rounds of spent high calibre ammunition cartridges were recovered from the area. Each of the CPI (M) martyrs had at least five bullets pumped into the head and chest. The pattern of killing has been witnessed earlier also and on several occasions. What emboldens the killers is a question that needs to be seriously debated for counter-measures to be put in place.

The security personnel are perhaps not quick enough in giving chase especially when the incidents happen in remote villages abutting on Jharkhand miles away from the nearest police station and chowki, and then again, once the assailants cross over the border very close by and are in Jharkhand, they are virtually in a 'safe haven'. The fact remains that the pattern is being repeated alarmingly with the killers coming in, laying in ambush, certainly in full knowledge of the movements of the comrades they target, and then springing into action, killing CPI (M) workers.

Dipak Sarkar who heads the Midnapore west unit of the CPI (M) as its secretary has condemned the killing and said that the people would not lie low when such attacks are organised on CPI (M) workers in the future by the forces of reaction an sectarianism. Lengthy processions were taken out the next morning by the local units of the CPI (M) ad the DYFI strongly reproving the killing.

(B P)