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| PRONAB MONDAL , THE TELEGRAPH: | |||||||||||||||||||||
Bhimpur, June 19: Police to-day were forced to abandon their plans to push ahead to Lalgarh and were instead engaged in a gun battle with Maoists who put up fresh barricades along the road from Pirakata that had been “recaptured” by the forces yesterday. In the evening, after the firing had been quelled and the road cleared of boulders and “captured” once again, an improvised explosive device blew up a police jeep at Kalitala, a desolate place near Pirakata.Two security guards and the driver were injured. The condition of the driver is said to be critical. The jeep is used by the subdivisional police officer of Domkol, Murshidabad, but he was not in it as he was overseeing operations elsewhere. A short while later, the police twice heard something that sounded like blasts at Bhimpur and were trying to find out till late tonight if a culvert had been blown up. “Pirakata is the base from where we get our supplies,” an official said. “So it is imperative the culverts stay in place.” In an operation carried out over nearly three hours yesterday, security forces had lobbed tear-gas shells and baton charged villagers to take control of an 8km stretch of the road from Pirakata to Bhimpur. They set up camps at Koima and Tirlakhali, a few kilometres behind Bhimpur, and patrolled the area through the night. However, the force wound up the camps and moved up to Bhimpur this morning, leaving the stretch unguarded. Taking advantage of this, the Maoists and the villagers put up blockades at five points from Malida to Tirlakhali. When the police went to remove them, guerrillas hiding in the fields fired at them. Although the firing was intermittent, the scene resembled a battlefield. Over a hundred CRPF and state police personnel exchanged fire with the Maoists at Tirlakhali, lying on the ground, taking cover behind small huts and buildings and crawling on paddy fields. At the Malida end, two companies of the BSF, which was to join the rest of the force at Bhimpur, got engaged in the battle even though they were yet to be formally deployed. However, at the end of three hours of firing, there were no casualties. By evening, the police were in control of the stretch again, this time with the BSF carrying out area-domination exercises. Once the BSF took over patrolling, some CRPF as well as state police personnel returned to the Pirakata camp as the one at Bhimpur was yet to be made a “base camp”. This morning, however, it appeared that the police would proceed to Lalgarh as had been announced yesterday. DIG (Midnapore range) Praveen Kumar as well as West Midnapore superintendent of police Manoj Verma arrived at the Bhimpur camp and held a series of meetings to chalk out strategy. “Two kilometres ahead of the Bhimpur camp start the Jhitka jungles,” an officer said. “The terrain is very different from the 8km we have so far covered and we suspect many armed Maoists are hiding in the jungles, ready to fire at us.” At 1pm, 40 personnel of the CRPF’s Cobra unit arrived at Bhimpur. Its personnel, who are meant to fight the guerrillas the way guerrillas fight their war, were all in plain clothes, apparently to confuse the Maoists and make them think they are common people or even part of the rebel ranks. The Cobra force was meant to move into the jungles and sanitise them while others moved along the metalled road. Instead, they only inspected a 2km stretch from the Bhimpur camp to the Jhitka jungles. “Let us see if we can push ahead tomorrow,” an officer said. “Since the chief minister was attacked on November 2 last year, the state government has done nothing,” Chidambaram told The Telegraph on the eve of his meeting with Bhattacharjee. “It is inexplicable why Bengal has not banned the Maoist party. We feel it should be banned in Bengal as it is banned in other states.” Under the unlawful activities (prevention) act, Naxalite groups and all their front organisations are banned by the Centre and by all states affected by Naxalite violence. However, Bengal has dithered even after a near-fatal attack on the motorcade of the chief minister and then Union steel minister Ram Vilas Paswan. Since law and order is a state subject, it is not obligatory for states to follow the Centre. A home department official in Calcutta said the Bengal government wants to fight Maoists “politically”. A CPM state committee leader added: “We believe dialogue and not ban should be the process of seeking solutions in a democracy. If the state bans Maoists, how will we defend our stand against such action when Indira Gandhi clamped Emergency and banned many organisations?” The CPM has blamed the Trinamul Congress for being hand-in-glove with the Maoists. But Chidambaram stood by the UPA ally at a media briefing on cabinet proceedings. He said it was wrong to insinuate that “the CPI(Maoist) are supported either by the Trinamul Congress or the Congress.... I have seen Mamataji condemn Maoist violence on television”. Chidambaram advocated a more comprehensive strategy to tackle Maoists, hinting at a larger effort that would go beyond Lalgarh. “These cannot be ad hoc measures, there has to be a comprehensive plan,” he said. He also cautioned against expectations of a quick flushout in Lalgarh. “This will take time,” he stressed. But he also hinted that it was well possible that as security forces proceeded, armed Maoists may stage a tactical withdrawal. At the same time, the home minister endorsed Bhattacharjee’s appeal to the Naxalites to come to the talks table. “The CM told me he had made an appeal to Maoist leaders and tribal leaders that the state government is willing to talk. I endorse that appeal. The central government would be happy to facilitate such talks,” he told reporters. There is little likelihood, though, that a dialogue is on the cards. Talks with Maoists have failed in Andhra Pradesh and security strategists believe they used the time to regroup. Chidambaram later dismissed too much speculation on a possible dialogue: “I am not saying there will be a dialogue with Kishanji or someone but we are saying the tribal leaders (who support Maoists) can talk.” Chidambaram advised caution in the use of words such as “war” to describe the Lalgarh operation. “A government does not go to war with its own people. These are Indians and they have grievances, in a democracy there are established ways of seeking redress, taking to arms is not one of them. But the word ‘war’ should not be used,” he said in answer to a question.
Midnapore, June 19: The tribal body that started the seven-month-old Lalgarh agitation with Maoist backingtoday threatened a “fight to death” in the face of the government offensive. “We were born here, we are agitating here and we will die here,” said Chhatradhar Mahato, chief of the People’s Committee against Police Atrocities.“The barricades will continue. The more they are forcibly removed, the deeper will be the (public)anger at the police and support for us.” Mahato, speaking to The Telegraph at Barapelia, 5km north of Lalgarh town, said the movement had begun because of the “government’s long neglect of the tribal people, who have been surviving on ant eggs for far too long”. “Our movement is for the development of the people. They (the government) cannot gain people’s confidence by using force,” Mahato, the secretary of the committee, added. He expressed surprise that the state government had called in paramilitary and additional police forces in response to the destruction of a house being built by Anuj Pandey, the CPM’s Binpur zonal committee secretary. “Yet no one is asking how this leader could build such a palatial mansion,” he said. Mahato alleged that Pandey’s brother Dalim, Lalgarh CPM local committee leader, had amassed huge wealth. “Whenever any land transaction took place in the region, he would take a commission. Why were the police brought in to protect these tainted brothers?” The committee secretary wondered why no action was taken when CPM offices were burnt in Khejuri and the police boycotted at the behest of Trinamul Congress MP Subhendu Adhikari. “The same government is now using central forces against us….” Committee president Lalmohan Tudu, who too was at Barapelia, said everyone in the region supported the movement. “The battle has entered the heart of Lalgarh. The forces will now see what they are up against.” Singrai Baskey, resident of Kantapahari, 7km north of Lalgarh town, said: “We are with the movement. We have realised how much this movement means to us now that the entire nation has its eyes fixed on Lalgarh.” But Fani Chakraborty (name changed on request), resident of Ramgarh, 11km from Lalgarh town, said many villagers had been forced to join the agitation against their will. “We are being forced to give subscriptions to the committee and being made to join the rallies,” he alleged. |
Saturday, June 20, 2009
DEMOLITION MEN: Activists of the People’s Committee Against Police Atrocities destroy the house of Chani Karan, a CPI(M) zonal committee member, at Lalgarh in West Medinipur district on Wednesday.
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