People's Democracy

'Maoists' Kill Five CPI(M) Workers In 72 Hours

B Prasant

COMRADE Gopinath Murmu finally died, most painfully, pleading for water that he could not be given because of the �Maoist� diktat that none of the wounded at the Nadadia village would be allowed to be taken out from the hutment where they were pushed into, nor would any kind of medical assistance be administered. Comrade Gopinath had been shot along with nine others earlier by a hit squad of the �Maoists�. Of the wounded, two had already died on the spot as reported.

Abani Bhuinya, the Gram Panchayat member of Ramgarh abutting Lalgarh survives but for how long nobody knows. He was sneaked out this morning (April 24, 2009) to a nearby health centre where he told us about the inhuman way the �Maoists� along with their Trinamuli �local guides� target the CPI(M) workers. They use blunt weapons first to break the bones of the arms and legs of those they had kidnapped and only then they would shoot to kill.

Abani told us, pain written all over his elderly face, that he was beaten up and shot � yet he has survived, at least until as we file this report. His is a critical condition with arterial as well as bone damage all over his body. The CPI(M), following state secretary Biman Basu�s express direction, responds to this criminal aggression with vast mass assemblages and marches all over Midnapore west.

Elsewhere at the Press Club of Kolkata, Chhatradhar Mahato, the �Maoist�-backed �resistance� committee�s �spokesperson� attributed Gopinath�s and other�s deaths to �addiction to alcohol: there were few takers for his likely fairy tale of the grisly kind.

Deep into the night of April 24, we learnt that two more CPI(M) comrades have been martyred by the Maoists � this time at Supurdi village at Balarampur. The �Maoists� were accompanied by Trinamulis of local origin and misdemeanours. This time the occasion was a happy Chhau dance festival in which a large number of villagers had congregated. The dance troupes performed throughout the night. Men, women, children kept coming and going, some from far flung places, other from nearby villages clusters.

As the night sky became lighter in tone, two CPI(M) workers, Comrade Baikuntho Mahato, Balarampur zonal committee member of the CPI(M), and Comrade Bibhuti Sing Sardar (who himself leads a popular Chhau dance troupe) left the fair.

They were intercepted at a lonely place by a group of ten heavily armed �Maoists.� The assassins opened fire from their automatic weapons at almost point blank range. The CPI(M) workers fell �� riddled with at least twenty bullet wounds each. With their martyrdom, the �Maoists� had killed five CPI(M) workers in 72 hours� time in the western part of Bengal.