People's Democracy

Eight �Maoists� Killed In Mass Resistance 

B Prasant

THEY came to loot and burn, and they came to kill. They had to leave in a hurry in the face of stiff resistance, mass resistance, from thousands of rural folk who were determined to defend the Enayetpur CPI(M) office in Midnapore west. Biman Basu speaking to PD said that the �people had maintained, successfully, the sanctity of a Party office above which the Red Flag flutters.�

What happened at Enayetpur commenced when around five in the afternoon � it was already by then dark in the jangal mahal as the short autumnal day rolled in � a large number of killers trooped in, and their clear, pre-decided aim was to burn the local CPI(M) office, which, Biman Basu reminded us, also acted as the shelter for those ousted from their home-and-hearth in nearby localities by the �Maoist�-Trinamuli nexus of goons and hoods.  Thus, he pointed out, a successful attack would have proved nothing short of a human tragedy of great proportions as the �Maoist� hired killers are loathe to take prisoners.

As soon as the gangs of armed killers approached the CPI(M) office, firing automatic weapons in the air, holding aloft lit torches, and swinging along large jerry cans filled with kerosene, they ran into a solid wall of maybe ten thousand local villagers, lathis, dahs, and staves at the ready.  It was simply a case of resist or be butchered. A struggle ensued that carried on well into the evening.  The �Maoist� killers, self-styled experts as they are in the criminal act of individual assassination, had not known before what mass fury constitutes.

After a brief hand-to-hand, close body contact struggle the �Maoists� and their Trinamuli lackeys ran away.  More than thirty of the villagers were left severely injured.  It is also believed that the �Maoist� attackers lost at least eight persons, dragging their wounded and the rest of the dead away as is their practice. 

A large contingent of the joint security forces did make an appearance when the fracas was over and pleaded that the unknown terrain, the pitch-black darkness of the roads also rendered impassable, unfamiliarity of the surroundings, and discretionary caution had prevented then from appearing earlier.

SQUABBLING

Elsewhere the inner-squabbling between once-beloved-of-each-other �Maoists� and Jharkhandis saw another step mounted as the former killed in cold blood three local level leaders of the latter outfit at Belpahari.  In a related development, Asit Sarkar, a �theoretician� of the �Maoists� and later a leader of a breakaway Belpahari-based faction of the outfit was brutally done to death in the dark of the night of September 20, 2009. 

In the meanwhile, at Sundarpur village in Murshidabad, the happiness of the Eid day was tragically robbed of its glad-tidings when a CPI(M) worker, Comrade Zachariah Sheikh was hacked to a painful demise in broad daylight by goons of the Pradesh Congress. Comrade Zachariah had been instrumental among those CPI(M) workers who had toiled hard to ensure a runaway win, after decades, for the CPI(M), at the Sundarpur Gram Panchayat this time around.

The same evening at Indus in Bankura, a CITU leader, Naba Ghosh was attacked and left with heavily bleeding injuries by the hoodlums in the pay and protection of the Trinamulis.  Nanda is recovering in a local health centre.