(Weekly Organ of the Communist Party of India
(Marxist)
Vol. XXXIII
No.
17
May
03, 2009
Keshpur
Villagers Drive Off Raiders
KESHPUR, we recall, was the area that the Trinamuli chief had called
the �Seshpur� or the �end of the road� for CPI(M). That was back
in the early part of the new century. At present, nearly all the
Gram Panchayats of the area are run by the CPI(M) and the Left Front.
Much water has flowed down the murmuring Haldi River since then.
However, recently, April 20, 2009, to be specific, a gang of armed
raiders carrying automatic weapons descended on Keshpur and the aim was
clearly to revive the jagiri and jaidaat they once had had in the area,
looting, molesting women, killing CPI(M) workers, generally causing
mayhem to become the order of the day.
The train of events started late in the day as the sun leaned to the
west at the end of a day of swelter and sweat (the temperature reaching
upto and beyond 45 degree Celsius in the shade. The first
indication was the whoop of the raiders as they shot their way into the
fields at the end of which stands Keshpur. The raiders were divided
into two groups. One group of 20 came in single file firing all the
while, covering the second group that tried to sneak around into the
village cluster using a side route.
MASS MOBILISATION
The villagers, who had been bloodied during the earlier fray between
1999 and 2003, came out fearlessly wielding sickles, staves, and plain
old lathis of slightly fearsome proportions. The villagers
numbered at least one thousand. Mass mobilisation started quickly
thereafter and at the end one saw more than five thousand men and women
come streaming out bare-handed to defend home-and-hearth, from
Kendapara, Baramesa, Panichhara, and Kusumdahari village
segments.
The second group of raiders found themselves between the devil and the
deep sea for the first group comprising mostly of �Maoists� would not
allow the second group consisting largely of Trinamulis turn their
back. Members of the second group hurried into the first thatched
house they could find.
In the meanwhile, the first group had been put on the run despite
dozens of villagers receiving pellet and bullet wounds, and the
fleeing �Maoists� fired wildly, hitting repeatedly the hutments where
their comrades-at-armed-dacoity were also hiding, hitting indeed their
brethren goons more than a score of times.
When the raiders had been chased off into Midnapore west�s border with
the neighbouring state of Jharkhand, the villagers returned triumphant
to find three of the Trinamulis groaning from wounds in the house where
they had taken shelter albeit in vein.
HISTORY SHEETERS
It was then that the villagers found among the wounded � none of the
wounded are in serious condition � Budha Mahato the terror of the early
2000s who stands guilty in the history sheet as a cold-blooded
professional killer, having murdered three, and had kidnapped for
ransom a dozen-odd persons. Along with him lay down cowering two
other professional sharp-shooters named Bhakti Dala Bera and Sambhu
Biswas. The fourth sharp-shooter Tarapada, a �Maoist� who led the
second group made good his escape in the excited m�l�e that followed
around the �captive� killers.
The whole episode, said Professor Dipak Sarkar, state committee member
of the Bengal CPI(M) who heads the Midnapore west district unit, was a
throwback to April 30, 2001 when under the joint leadership of the then
People�s War Group (PWG) and the Rajani Dolui-Mohd Rafiq-led Trinamul
Congress, conducted an operation to capture Keshpur. Of course, this
time there was an important difference. It was the raiders who
were put on the run, helter-skelter, and unlike in other instances, the
�Maoists� would not carry even the walking wounded of their chums in
the Trinamul Congress.
ON THE ALERT
Trinamul chief must have been very, very disappointed at the entire
faux pas. Keshpur cannot, would not sympathise with her. In
the meanwhile, the police have arrested the raiders left behind.
The records of these worthies are fearsomely impressive as far as
heinous crimes are concerned. The present episode is over. The
villagers remain alert for any future recurrence.
People's Democracy