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PWG
vengeance vow stalks campaign in Garbeta
Santanu
Banerjee
Garbeta,
May 7:
Chhoto Angaria, a village with 37 houses near Bankura, is quiet
now—four months after violence wreaked havoc. It broke out
first at Bhaktar Mandal’s house. The silence though is disturbing.
Last month,
a pamphlet of the People’s War Group was in circulation that
vowed retaliation for the death of ‘‘our men in the CPI(M)
massacre of January 4’’.
Police reports
say that the Naxal outfit has pockets of power in the jungles of
Garbeta and neighbouring Bankura. The PWG’s vow has apparently
evoked fear.
The pamphlet
further says: ‘‘This election won’t stop the killings
by CPI(M) and Trinamool Congress. After the polls, the
war over villages will break out again.
‘‘We’ll
defeat both the CPI(M) and the Trinamool plans to destabilise the
villages. We have already destroyed the CPI(M)’s motorcycle
army... You boycott the poll and unite against the political terrorism
and arm yourself.’’
Four months,
a CID and now a CBI inquiry have failed to assure people. A security
officer said: ‘‘They (villagers) want to speak, but they
won’t for fear. The villagers don’t even go to the nearby
market to sell their produce because they are harassed. And we can’t
escort them either.’’
The pall of
fear, however, doesn’t appear to have affected senior CPI(M)
leaders of the state. Though they brush aside threats from PWG in
Garbeta (east and west), election campaigns here turn muted late
in the evenings.
The reason
is the recent murders of two local CPI(M) leaders, for which PWG
took the responsibility. One of its leaflets claims: ‘‘Tapan
Ghosh was one of the accused in the Chotto Angaria killings. We
have punished him.’’
It spoke in
similar fashion about Sibram Satpati whom the PWG ‘‘claimed
to have killed for uprooting tribals from their homes in Sarenga
in Bankura district’’.
The district
administration and top CPI(M) leaders though are not too bothered.
The central forces during elections would take care of the PWG,
they say. ‘‘We don’t consider them a threat,’’
a senior party leader said.
After all,
the crackdown has started. Recently, the police in Midnapore arrested
as many as 32 men for suspected links with the PWG.
District Magistrate
M.V. Rao dismissed reports that CPI(M) candidates here seek police
assurance before they begin their campaigns in the evening. He said:
‘‘So what? Even Opposition leaders can do the same. It
doesn’t prove there’s a threat from the PWG.’’
Threat or no,
the Naxalites have resurfaced and that too after almost three decades.
It’s not clear if the failure of land reforms has triggered
this re-emergence. A senior CPI(M) leader and Politburo member said:
‘‘We have no reason to believe it.’’
Police say
the PWG began infiltrating parts of Midnapore, Bankura and Hooghly
in 1997. A senior officer said: ‘‘We had told the authorities
then.’’
Top political
parties, however, are hardly bothered about the early warnings.
They are busy blaming each other for hiring the Naxalites to kill
opponents. Trinamool leader Rajani Kanta Dolui said: ‘‘The
CPI(M) hired the PWG during the Keshpur violence.’’
The CPI(M)
blames Trinamool for being hand in glove with the PWG. A zonal CPI(M)
leader claims the party hired PWG to finish them. ‘‘They
have already killed two of us,’’ he said.
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