People's Democracy

FOUR ASSASSINS KILLED, SEVERAL INJURED

Villagers Chase Away Armed Gang

of �Maoists� at Lalgarh

AT Lalgarh in Midnapore west, where the Trinamuli-�Maoist� depredations including gruesome killings and abductions have continued apace, joint forces ops or not, a thin, bright, streak of glow lit up the political scenario in the laterite zone late into the night of September 18, 2009. It was an example of an illumined class struggle all the way.

A large gang of Trinamulis and �Maoist� criminals chose to attack the Dasbandh village to the north of Ramgarh in the Lalgarh locale. The hamlet is principally inhabited in by goalas of the ancient line of caste of cattle herders.  Recent times had seen the villagers choose to grit their teeth and -- boldly refuse to cooperate with either the Chhatradhar Mahato-led right reactionary Trinamulis or the left sectarian and the heavily-armed, �Maoist� gangsters.

Devoid of shelter, the �Maoist� goons issued a threat earlier in the day that representatives of the goala community including the Mondol or the village headman must be present from Dasbandh village at the next �squad meeting� of the �Maoists.� None of the rural folk of the village heeded the notice. 

As an act of avenging their wrath as well as a fulfilment of a step towards �teaching the goalas a good lesson,� 20-odd armed �Maoists� entered the village and knocked on the door of Luba Mondol and his son Dhanu Mondal � neither of whom were in their hutment but had chosen to go to the deep of the jungles to collect firewood as is the custom in the jangal mahal, to avoid the fierce daylight heat.

THE RESISTANCE

As soon as the killers knocked down the flimsy piece of slattened plank that passed off as the �door� of the hut, the two women remaining inside woke up from their sleep, thought for a while and rushed out with swinging large dahs with which they split open dry coconuts.  The bravura of the attackers vanished � and they ran, and ran.  The room to flee had by then closed up.

For, by that time the entire village had woken up at the ruckus and hundreds of goalas came streaming out of their hutments with whatever they could lay their hands on.  At close quarters the sten guns that the attackers carried was of little use as body conduct range developed and the beatings began.  At the end of the heroic resistance, three of the attackers lay dead, while the �rearguard� of the �Maoist� squad managed to drag away two more bodies.  A dozen-odd villagers were critically injured and had since been removed to district hospitals.

The forests throbbed with the cheering that arose from the throats of the relieved villagers. A new chapter of resistance to known criminals and hardened killers has perhaps started in the form of mass resistance in the forest range in western Bengal. 

It should be added that the entire village is a stronghold of the CPI(M), and the rural folk knew that despite the strong, if disoriented, presence of the joint forces in the vastness that is the jangal mahal, 12 CPI(M) workers and sympathisers had been killed in the vicinity over the past two weeks.  Among those killed very recently had been the school teacher Comrade Kartick Mahato, and CPI(M) workers, Comrades Krishna Kundu and Sambhu Mahato. That did not deter them from putting the class enemy on the run.

In  a related development, the joint forces uncovered a �sleeper cell� of the �Maoist� goons in the household of a well-known physician of Kantapahari named Jatin Pratihar.  Jatin would provide food, shelter, and funds to the top brass of the �Maoist� killers in the shelter which was in the shape of a well-appointed air-cooled �cellar� below the ground level under his palatial residential building. And perhaps it was this place that facilitated the �Maoists� to operate their electronic NetCom through which they interacted with one another and also kept a cosy touch with the bourgeois media.

Jatin�s wife Sulekha, also in police custody as we write this, has been a senior worker of the local unit of the ICDS and there, at the work place, she would use threats to make the women workers pay up regularly for the �incidental expenditures� incurred by the �guests� who would come and go, to and from the Pratihar �cell.� Two other �Maoist� hooligans were arrested from the Pratihar house, the police tell us, as we file this report.

KILLING IN

JADAVPUR

The murderous attacks on CPI(M) workers and sympathisers have started in Jadavpur, post the Lok Sabha elections. During the night of September 17, 2009 Comrade Dilip Dhara, a close supporter of the CPI(M) and a youth organisation member was battered to death and his two young comrades, Joydeb Mondal and Totan Halder were left critically injured at Chhit-Kalikapur in east Jadavpur.

These young men, for a long time now, had been the targets of the assassins who are known for their far-from-tenuous links with the Trinamulis.  The trio ran tea shops, and were in the habit of rising in protest, taking along them the people, against all forms of anti-social activities. Bengal state secretary of the CPI(M) Biman Basu has condemned the killing.