People's DemocracyB Prasant
HIMADRI Sen Roy, 52, also known as 'Somen,' is an insensitively brutish, fanatically violent, and psychopathically dedicated anti-Communist, whose political morphology itself is programmed to kill as many Bengal CPI(M) workers in as painful a manner as possible. He is also a handy link-man of the Trinamul Congress and the various factions of the Jharkhandis and Naxalite splinters, and a conduit of foreign funding of not only the Maoists but also of outfits who act as the Maoists' fronts in the urban centres in particular,
As dusk descended on February 23 at Hridaypur railway station in north 24 Parganas, Sen Roy, about to board a north-bound train, with a few hard-faced companions, was challenged, chased, wrestled down, and then cuffed by a small squad of plainclothes police (a rare and exceptional success for the latter in recent times). The clutch of corporate media underlings who had probably accompanied the Maoist killer, to them he is the great anti-CPI(M) 'hero,' made a huge fuss of creating distraction by asking 'Somen' irately, repeatedly, and loudly, 'are you really 'Somen?' hoping that the curious crowd that had gathered around the station platform would intervene even as 'Somen' kept on crying plaintively that 'dacoits' were abducting him.'
A petty criminal with a perverse mindset who has always hankered for a bit of media space, or a slice of crepuscular footage on the TV channels, 'Somen' could not resist but whisper repeatedly in a kind of religious chant 'yes, I am he.' He was taken away, quietly sobbing, the great 'hero,' along with another Maoist killer who was probably his personal guard, Dilip aka 'Deba,' and who is wanted for several murders of CPI(M) workers in western Bengal.
RUTHLESS KILLER
'Somen,' who often found favourable TV coverage, face suitably lurking in the shadows, and always had his gleeful 'press statements' duly published after he had 'scored' by killing another unarmed CPI(M) worker, has been responsible, by his own admission, for the killing of nearly 27 CPI(M) workers in Midnapore west, Purulia, and Bankura.
'Somen' lurked around and gave instructions to his gang of trained killers, when the husband-wife duo, Rabi Kar and Anandamoyee Kar, the two CPI(M) workers of Purulia were burnt alive. 'Somen' also led the attacks of recent past that ended in the brutal murders of Mangal Mahato and Karamchand Singh.
In between, he had either directly killed or had led the killers in the brutal assassinations of CPI(M) workers for the past two-and-a-half years around the red clay zones bordering Jharkhand. He was also the killer-in-charge when a series of police constables and officers were killed in the western districts of Bengal over 2006 -2007.
For a criminal with no visible source of income other than proceeds from loot, regarding which he had boasted that he had personally supervised the crimes at Nandigram, the killer led a comfortable life and was padded up enough moneywise to move around in SUVs and jeeps at will, all over Bengal, carrying highly-sophisticated weapons of foreign, mostly Israeli origin, including the featherweight and quick-touch, all-plastic, collapsible versions of the AK-57 rifles. We have strong reasons to believe that he has built a network of potential killers in Kolkata, especially among gullible young men and women, as the police has long suspected. In a recent 'editorial,' in a 'Maoist' publication, 'Somen' boasts that 'we shall continue to remain at Nandigram where we always had been throughout 2005-2007.'
TRINAMUL, MEDIA IN A SPOT
The Trinamul Congress goons in the two Midnapores were visibly distressed and one of the men who liaised between the 'Maoists' and the Trinamul Congress told us that with 'Somen's arrest, 'we have as it were lost both arms at Nandigram: there is little chance now of launching a fresh offensive on the Nayachar project.' The Midnapore Trinamul Congress lumpen themselves are in a bit of a confusing fuddle of late what with the Adhikari's, the father-and-son jotdar duo of Sisir and Subhendu, having both fallen out with Mamata Banerjee over who would run from the Tamluk Lok Sabha seat. The Ananda Bazaar Patrika, fighting to the end, would qualify the story of the arrest by noting that it was the 'claim of the police' that the man they had apprehended at the Hridaypur railway station was allegedly 'Somen.'
