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For the last two or
three years the Government of West Bengal has been pursuing a policy of intense
state repression towards political opponents by trampling underfoot all
democratic norms. It is not that they were democratic in their policies and
attitudes earlier. In fact, ever since the CPM came to power in West Bengal in
1977 with the blessings of the ruling classes, they had been adopting through
cunning and deceit one anti-people policy after another. The main difference
between then and now is that beset with a terrible socio-economic and political
crisis, they have now-a-days become more shameless, arrogant and despotic both
in their speeches and acts. The much-publicised talk about ‘unnatatara’(more
developed) Left Front government is heard no more; fees have been hiked to
unbelievable proportions in schools, colleges and universities, capitation fees
are extracted from applicants in medical colleges, even profit-making public
sector units are being sold to private hands at throw-away prices, electricity
charges are soaring daily, taxes are imposed even on drinking water,
slum-dwellers and hawkers are evicted without rehabilitation, bus and taxi fares
are increased almost at regular intervals; the chief minister Buddhadev
Bhattacharya and other government representatives are receiving representatives
of different imperialist agencies or paying regular trips to imperialist
countries to woo foreign capital thereby causing severe drainage of public
money. The US consultancy firm McKinsey & Co. has now become their friend,
philosopher and guide. Nearly 4400 acres of land in the Kulpi dock area had been
handed over free to the Peninsular & Oriental Co.—the same company that nipped
in the bud many of the national shipping ventures during British colonial rule.
And whenever the people protested against oppression, exploitation, deprivation
and social injustice and marched through the streets in procession with
placards, shouting slogans denouncing the government and its policies, they were
confronted with baton-wielding policemen. The people of West Bengal have learnt
though their own bitter experience that this so-called ‘Left’ Front government
of West Bengal is, in reality, like the BJP, the Congress and others, one of the
most trusted agents of the Indian ruling classes and their imperialist masters.
The people, however,
were not prepared to accept such things meekly. Many of them felt, like their
revolutionary ancestors of the 1960s and 1970s that in order to make the world a
better place to live in, they must think of bringing about armed revolutionary
change in their own country. Some among them drew inspiration from the
revolutionary movements of Dandakaranya and Bihar regions and sought to put
Maoism into practice. Sensing danger to their very existence, the ruling classes
and their political representatives—Vajpeyi-Advani-Buddha-Chandrababu & Co.—let
loose their greyhounds against people in the name of combating the policies of
CPI(M-L)PW and the MCC. They did not have the guts to oppose revolutionary
ideology politically; so they tried to curb it with the state machinery.
Hundreds of people were arrested from many parts of West Bengal on the mere
suspicion of being PW activists or sympathisers and subjected to various forms
of physical and mental torture. What Siddhartha Ray & Co. had done to the
communist revolutionaries in the 1970s, was being done by Buddha & Co. today.
On the one hand, the
WB chief minister declared in his speech of 15 August 2002 that human rights and
democratic norms were protected and never violated in West Bengal; on the other,
his police force are making a mockery of the existing laws and the verdicts of
the judiciary by deliberately trampling underfoot the Supreme Court’s 11-point
directive (as stipulated by the Supreme Court ruling vide Justice D.K.Basu vs.
Government of West Bengal case of 1996) to the states at the time of arrest. At
the time of arrest, in the CPM-dominated state of West Bengal, neither any
warrant of arrest nor any memo of arrest is given by the police. The police
forces raid houses without any mark of identity on their uniforms. No medical
tests of the arrested persons are made at the time of arrest. The relatives of
the arrested persons are not given either the numbers of police vehicles in
which the arrested were being taken nor the name of the destination to which
they were being taken. Many of them such as Sudip Chongdar, Nabo Mahato and
Koushik Ganguly were brutally tortured; Abhijit Sinha was driven to his death by
inhuman mental torture. Many of them were not produced in court within 24 hours
after arrest as stipulated by law.
In the rural areas of
West Medinipur, Bankura, Purulia, Nadia, Birbhum and North Bengal, police
repression was barbaric. Many thatched houses with tiled roofs were broken,
doors were pulled down and grains of different varieties were mixed up. Kerosene
oil was mixed up with the water of the wells—which are the only source of
drinking water in many villages. Documents relating to land and houses as also
money were forcibly taken away at gun point. Like the Siddhartha Ray regime of
the 1970s, the ‘Greyhounds’ of the Buddha-led government are also resorting to
‘badli arrest’ or replacement arrest. Father in the absence of the son, wife in
the absence of the husband, one brother in the absence of another, was arrested.
In the absence of Jaleswar Soren of Hondolchua village in Belpahari area of West
Medinipur, his 8-month-pregnant wife Sulekha Soren was arrested and sent to
jail. It was in Medinipur Central Jail that she gave birth to a son. The sick
and virtually disabled octogenarian Pyalaram Mahato was sent to prison on the
ludicrous charge of being a PW squad commander. Lakshmi Mahato(68 years) and
Harekrishna Pal(62 years) of Sukhjora village, Gendhi Pan(65 years) and
Saraswati Munda(60 years) of Pachapani village were beaten and arrested. The
Supreme Court ruling on the mandatory presence of police women while arresting
women is deliberately ignored. The ‘sensitive’ police force of the West Bengal
government even took away one grandmother and a one-month-old baby when nobody
else was available in the house. The brutality of these ‘anti-social hoodlums’(
as one Supreme Court Judge described the Indian police force) surpassed all
other acts when they kicked on the belly of a pregnant woman and stripped
Sulochana Kalindi of Belpahari to determine her sex.
Sampa Dasgupta, a BA
student of a Kolkata college and member of a student organisation, went to a
place called Naoda in Murshidabad district to take part in a ‘go
to-the-village-campaign’ to get a first-hand knowledge of the reality of the
Bengal villages. She was arrested and then kept in the police lock-up, not
provided food for four consecutive days, and then sent to Berhampur jail. A
commentary on Buddhadev’s ‘more developed’ government indeed!
Ethnic groups were
not spared either by these ‘greyhounds’ of the Buddhadev-led government. On the
charge of being supporters of the Kamtapuri movement, the Rajbanshis of the
North Bengal districts have been subjected to ruthless state repression. From
late 2000, a police campaign, named ’Operation Kamtapuri’, was initiated by the
combat force throughout North Bengal and hundreds of people were arrested on the
charge of ‘waging war against the State’. In all villages the Rajbanshi people
were picked up, mercilessly beaten and sent to jail.
Like the hated
Siddhartha Ray-led government of the 1970s, the Buddhadev-led government is also
resorting to all conceivable methods to keep not just political opponents but
even ordinary people behind bars for an indefinite period. One case after
another is being tagged; if any one is released on bail in one case, he/she is
re-arrested at the jail gate without any arrest memo and tagged in another case
in far-off districts. The Public Prosecutor, at the time a prisoner is getting
bail in the last remaining case, is not informing the Judge that that person was
wanted in another case, as is stipulated by law. The re-arrests of Lakshmi
Mahato, Harekrishna Pal, Rosomoy Kalindi, Bidhubhusan Mahato, Babulal Ahir,
Partha Bandyopadhyay, Dipak Dey, Parashar Bhattacharya and others make a mockery
of Buddhadev’s tall public claim that human rights are protected in West Bengal.
By the end of 2002, the number of political prisoners lodged in different jails
of West Bengal had crossed the four-figure mark.
Many of them were not
even produced in court on scheduled dates on the plea of lack of policemen and
vehicles. It is pertinent to point out that the police force lack neither in
strength nor in vehicles when they conduct raids to persecute and maim the
people. But the villainy of the Left Front government lies elsewhere. According
to law, if a person accused of committing certain offence and in jail is not
given a charge-sheet by the end of 90 days from the day of arrest, he or she
will automatically get bail in that case. But to make this law operative, the
prisoner must be produced in court on stipulated dates. The West Bengal police
by deliberately refusing to take them from jails for the purpose of production
in court on those dates are in reality cunningly evading the law in order to put
the prisoners behind bars for an indefinite period. Moreover, although most of
them have been charged with the conspiracy of waging war against the state, none
of them were accorded the status of political prisoners. Those who were tortured
in various police lock-ups, were denied proper medical treatment . This is a
clear departure from the election promise that the CPM made in 1977 that no
person would be arrested on political grounds and that there would be no
political prisoners in the jails of West Bengal.
The
democratic-minded, sensitive people of West Bengal raised their voices of
protest in unequivocal terms against this state terrorism pursued by the CPM-led
government. Teachers of colleges and universities either individually or through
their associations, activists of political parties and student bodies, human
rights organisations such as APDR, various other mass organisations, writers,
artists and other intellectuals and workers boldly stood up. They sent open
letters to the chief minister, organised protest demonstrations and processions,
joined in mass conventions and denounced this police brutality, demanded the
unconditional release of all political prisoners and proper medical treatment to
those who were in need of it. They also demanded exemplary punishment to the
guilty police officers. The Bandi Mukti Committee (Committee for the Release of
Political Prisoners) was formed in mid-2002 drawing dedicated members from these
organisations as also individuals in its ranks. The APDR (Association for the
Protection of Democratic Rights) and the BMC(Bandi Mukti Committee) have
consistently fought for the release of political prisoners through various
means. The days of the political prisoners of Medinipur Central Jail were also
full of struggle. They resorted to hunger strikes to realise their just demands
on 23 September 2002, 16 December,2002, 13 August 2003 as also from 10 September
to 18 September 2003.
After 10 October
2003—the day the OC of Bandwan PS, district Purulia, who was heading a combat
force to capture PW guerrillas was killed in a mine blast and subsequent
encounter near Katagora jungle in Purulia—the police let loose a reign of terror
in the Belpahari-Banshpahari area. A fact-finding team organised by the APDR
visited the affected villages viz., Nanna, Katagora, Lotojhorna,Dulukdi, Gurpana
and Bogudoba on 1 and 2 November 2003 and released a press statement on 5
November. In the name of arresting PW guerrillas, the police have been beating,
terrorising and arresting people from several villages. Bibekananda Manki of
Lotojhorna village was picked up from the road without informing the members of
the family and beaten up in the Bandwan PS. The same was the fate of Gurupada
Soren and Kunu Manki of the same village. In Dulukdi village, Madhu Singh was
tied up with a bamboo pillar in front of his tea shop, beaten mercilessly by the
combat force in the presence of his wife and mother, shot in the leg and the
barrel of a gun was pushed into his mouth. These greyhounds did not spare even
his wife Behula Singh and mother. They were pushed, slapped and humiliated. The
police tried to take away their two-year-old baby Jayanta Singh from the lap of
his mother. Madhu is in Purulia jail now.
From Gurpana village,
many were arrested. The doors of Baneswar Murmu’s house were broken and the
handful of things that they had were thrown all over the place. Sarat Murmu,
whom the APDR team met in the village, was beaten with batons and boots on the
head, neck and other parts of the body. Sombari Soren, the elder sister of Bhim
Soren, reported that Bhim was picked up at about 10/11 in the morning, cruelley
beaten in her presence and was accused of being a PW/MCC activist. He is in
Purulia jail now. Sarat Murmu was beaten by the police and released on bail
after languishing in the police lock-up and jail for 15 days.
The main brunt of the
police onslaught, however, fell on the people of Bogudoba village of the
Banshpahari area. This village is one of the remotest visited by the
fact-finding team. When the APDR team went there, those who gathered were mostly
women because a large number of men were forced to flee the village for fear of
getting arrested. Many houses were lying vacant with doors wide open. The combat
force have been coming to this village almost at regular intervals. Unable to
find Baidyanath Kisku, they, as ‘badli arrest’ took his wife Ahladi away. Unable
to nab Raimuni Soren, they beat up her mother Panumoni Soren. Unable to arrest
Prahlad Baske, the police arrested his sister Maino Baske. Unable to get hold of
Babulal Soren, they took away his 12-year-old son. When Babulal went to secure
his son’s release, he himself was arrested. Among others who were arrested, were
Bahadur Mandi, Dashma Tudu, Subal Kisku, Lakshan Kisku, Kanailal Kisku, Basudev
Kisku, Sarat Murmu, Basi Baske and Kalipada Kisku. Kanailal and Basudev were
brutally tortured in front of their house. Many people fled the village along
with their children to escape police harassment, torture and arrest.
Like all
reactionaries in history, the CPM is seeking to get rid of the crisis by maiming
and persecuting people. Here there is no difference between the CPM and the BJP,
between the CPM and the Congress or between CPM and the TDP of Andhra Pradesh
and others. All of them are trusted agents of US imperialism and toe the line
dictated by their foreign masters. But History is created not by the
reactionaries, but by the people. The more they pursue a policy of oppression
the more they are bound to face resistance from the people. And the greyhounds
through which they persecute the people will themselves one day be hounded out
of their lairs along with their masters and sent to their graves.
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