‘We never realised he was an extremist’

Somen, general secretary of the West Bengal unit of CPI (Maoists), who was arrested by a CID team from Hridaypur railway station in North 24 Parganas district on Saturday, is a dreaded extremist who had given the police many sleepless nights. In fact, it took the CID team and the media several hours to confirm that the arrested man was indeed Somen whom they had been looking for a long time.

One of the frontline Maoist leaders, Somen alias Bidhan is suspected to have masterminded the killing of several CPM leaders.

Somen joined active politics when Cal Steel Factory, a steel manufacturing company, at Khardah in North 24-Parganas district was shut down. Initially, he was a member of the CPM, but joined the Naxalite movement and was arrested in 1972. After being released, he became a member of the People’s War and then joined the CPI (Maoists), which came into being after the former ceased to exist, and took charge of the West Bengal unit.

A resident of Surya Sen Nagar in Khardah, Somen is a soft-spoken gentlemen according to his neighbours.

“He was a man of few words and never caused people any trouble. Little did we realise then that he was an extremist,” said a neighbour. Somen’s wife Sikha Sen Roy, who runs the family by stitching clothes, was reluctant to face the media. After repeated requests, she said: “I don’t know anything. I have come to know of my husband’s arrest from television.”

His mother Bina Devi said: “I had two sons. My younger son Niladri died in a road accident 10 years ago and my elder son Himadri never came home. Now, both my sons are gone.” In his column in the party magazine, Biplabi Yug, of which Somen was the editor, he had this to say about the movement in Nandigram. “We were in Nandigram right from the beginning. We led the movement at every step. We were in Nandigram, we are in Nandigram and we will be in Nandigram.”

“With Somen’s arrest, we hope to get some vital leads from him which will enable us to check the Maoist menace in the state,” Additional Director General of Police, CID, Bhupinder Singh, said.