People's Democracy

HUNDREDS OF CPI(M) WORKERS MADE INJURED AND HOMELESS

Trinamul Goons Kill CPI(M) Worker At Nandigram

B Prasant

THE threats � ominous if cowardly - that the Trinamul Congress chieftains of Nandigram like Taher, Sufiyan, and the Adhikaris, had issued right after the poll results for Nandigram block-I were out, have been translated soon enough into noxious action. The first victim of the terror spread by the criminals of the Trinamul Congress and its understudies at Nandigram has been Comrade Khalid Mullick of Garchakraberia.

Comrade Khalid was on his way to joining duty as a security guard at an industrial concern at Haldia. It was early in the morning. Near the Hazarakata crossing that had witnessed many-a-killing of CPI(M) workers throughout 2007, Comrade Khalid who was cycling his way to the ferry ghat to cross over to Haldia on the other side of the River Haldi was accosted by two dozen heavily-armed Trinamuli hoodlums.

Comrade Khalid, a tall and a very powerfully-built man, resisted as much as he could before he was pulled down from his mount and then tortured mercilessly with sharp weapons, iron rods, and hammers. Not a bone on his hands and legs remained unbroken. At last, when he lost consciousness, the miscreants were cruel enough to slice away the vital posterior tibia vein on both feet near the ankles, and as blood started to gush out in a great rolling flow, the criminals quietly disappeared, the smiling villains, the grisly bunch of cowards.

The commotion created earlier when Comrade Khalid was giving as good as he got, an instance of sheer bravery and Communist fortitude, ultimately saw CPI(M) workers lead a large group of villagers to the spot. Comrade Khalid was tenderly lifted, all efforts to stop the blood flow having failed, and then taken to Nandigram hospital, the same institution where the Trinamuli villains had throughout 2007 dragged innocent village women in and forced them to �confess� that they had been raped by �CPI(M) workers,� and who cared a damn for any pieces evidence or even witnesses?

EXTREME CRUELTY

A dance macabre of unthinkable proportions then took place as several dozen gun-toting criminals of the local Trinamul factions forced their way into the hospital, prevented the doctors from attending to Comrade Khalid who was gasping but was not in imminent danger of death, thanks to his tough constitution. The hoodlums attacked and drove the CPI(M) workers and the villagers away from the premises at gun point, chasing them deep inside the now-Trinamul-stronghold of Garchakraberia, a good five kilometres away. The medical staffs blanched in fear, and remained terrorised and immobile.

Allegedly, the local CRPF units assisted, not the medical staff, nor the CPI(M) workers, but the attacking Trinamuli goons, helping them to beat up the CPI(M) workers and drive them away also at gun point, lathis raining blows on their thin backs. Indeed, the turnaround for the worse in the frame of mind of the CRPF has been clear not just in Midnapore east but elsewhere in south and western Bengal as well.

The Trinamuli goons then came back, put to the torch the bicycles and scooters on which the CPI(M) supporters and the villagers had come and then the smiling villains stood guard so that Comrade Khalid was not attended to. As soon as they left, feeling smug with ghoulish satisfaction that �we have killed an enemy, many more would die in the days to come,� (the exact words they had the temerity to shout out aloud, again in the presence of the CRPF who pretended �not to comprehend Bengali�), the doctors with the help of CPI(M) workers a few of whom who had hidden themselves in the backyard of the hospital rushed the yet alive Comrade Khalid to the Tamluk hospital in a circuitous route.

Comrade Khalid had breathed his last by the time he was taken down from the cycle van and was about to be taken to the comfort of fresh linen and clean ambience in the hospital�s emergency room. Having bravely, courageously fought and held determinedly on to life, a Communist life, for five long hours, Comrade Khalid Mullick, barely 40, breathed his last. A 12-hour bandh of the area was successfully held at the call of the district unit of the CPI(M) later.

MURDERS MOST FOUL

Elsewhere, in north-central Bengal, things have taken a similar shape, perhaps worse, especially when we are talking about Murshidabad. The inability of Adhir Chaudhuri and his criminals to acknowledge the people�s verdict against them in the Zillah Parishad has resulted in their venting ire of the worst kind on CPI(M) supporters in the villages of zones like Domkal, Hariharpara, and Raninagar. The fact that the Pradesh Congress has also lagged behind by quite a distance behind CPI(M) candidates in the village- and block-level bodies, too, has made them quite insane with anger and frustration.

The latest instance of the Pradesh Congress�s aggravation was borne by two poor khet mazdoors - their only crime having been that they were long time youth front workers of the CPI(M). The specific area where the attack took place was Chak Ambarpur � the same area where back in 1985, the Pradesh Congress killers had cruelly assassinated after a bout of heinous torture the then Pradhan of the Gram Panchayat, Comrade Moksed Ali of the CPI(M).

This time the youth front workers, Comrades Said-ul Islam and Palan Sheikh, who have had their upbringing in the very village from where they were abducted at gun point in the dark of the night on the eve of the polls. They were then kept secreted away, bound hand-and-foot. When the results started to show the trend that Adhir and his running mates were about to face a landslide loss at the village level, the two CPI(M) workers were brought out, gagged, from where they had been confined, tortured in an indescribable manner for long hours with bamboo staves and sharp-pointed steel rods, and then bound to a tree trunk and thrown bombs at till they were turned into bleeding heaps. They died on the spot.

Allegedly even the local police appeared to be terrorised enough with the IC of Domkal PS confessing that he was not be able to find �any trace of any terror at all of any political party in the whole area.�

DEATH IN MALDAH

In Maldah, another foul killing took place courtesy of the Pradesh Congress whose assassins took their joy of poll win out on an 85-year-old CPI(M) worker, Comrade Sarif-ud-Din at Manikchak. The elderly CPI(M) worker, a veteran of many an election, was on his way back home after a tiring day as a poll worker when he was taunted and threatened. As usual, the old hand Comrade Sarif chose just to ignore the criminals.

The next morning when he was proceeding towards the gunj to purchase medicines for his chronic asthma, he was surrounded by Pradesh Congress goons, beaten to a pulp. Surviving even the grievous assault, the tough Comrade Sarif finally succumbed to his multiple internal haemorrhagic injuries on the way to Krishnagar hospital

Bengal state secretary of the CPI(M) Biman Basu has strongly condemned the killings in Midnapore east and in Murshidabad and has called upon the CPI(M) workers not to go in for any form of aggressive behaviour under any provocation, however grave the irritant action might well be -- now and in the days to come.