NANDIGRAM flares up again as bullets and bombs shatter the peace in the strife-torn region in West Bengals Purbo Medinipur district, killing two supporters of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), including Niranjan Mandal, an important local leader. The Trinamool Congress-backed Bhumi Uchhed Pratirodh (land eviction resistance) Committee (BUPC), an informal alliance forged between naxalites, the Socialist Unity Centre of India (SUCI) and the Jamait-i-Ulema-e-Hind, has dug up roads and destroyed bridges to deny the police and administration access to Nandigram.
After 11 months of protracted violence, which ended in November 2007, relative peace prevailed for four months. Another spate of violence ensued just before the panchayat elections in the State in May, 2008. After that, however, Nandigram was more or less quiet, with the Trinamool and its allies seizing power in the region through elections (including the zilla parishad of Purbo Medinipur district), and hope of normalcy was slowly returning. The region remained tense though, and skirmishes between the supporters of the CPI(M) and the BUPC were not uncommon. In fact, the last victim of the violence was CPI(M) supporter Khaled Mallik, who was killed on May 23, the day after the election results were announced.
During its ominous silence of a little over two months, the BUPC seemed to have been preparing the ground for another flare-up in Nandigram. According to sources, its activists were digging up culverts and damaging roads and bridges with the obvious intention of blocking access to Nandigram and isolating the region, as they were successful in doing in 2007 when they declared the place to be a muktanchal (liberated zone). Kanu Sahu, CPI(M) district secretary, Purbo Medinipur, told Frontline, We are constantly under threat. After the Trinamool won the elections here, they have been menacing anyone who happens to be sympathetic to the CPI(M). Two hundred and fifty farmers in the region have not been allowed to work in their fields because they were seen to be CPI(M) supporters.
On August 5, gunmen, allegedly BUPC supporters, broke into the house of Joydeb Paik, CPI(M) activist and primary schoolteacher in Sonachuda, and shot him. Though Paik survived the attack, as of August 8, he continued to be in a critical condition.
On August 6, in what appeared to be a well-planned attack, Niranjan Mandal was shot dead as he was returning home from Chorkendemar Primary School where he taught. Mandals residence was less than a kilometre away from his school. His killers had apparently been lying in wait for him and fled on two motorcycles after committing the crime. The only proper road that led to the scene of the crime was dug up in two places beforehand, possibly to hamper the entry of the police.
On August 7, the BUPC struck again, shooting down yet another CPI(M) supporter, Dulal Gadudas, while he was walking in a procession to protest against the heinous killings. Thereafter, the BUPC went on a rampage, torching the houses of CPI(M) activists Badal Mandal and Anup Mandal near Sonachuda. They also made a futile attempt to obstruct a police team, led by Kuldip Singh, Inspector General West, and Parveen Kumar, Deputy Inspector General Medinipur, when it tried to enter Sonachuda.
Intermittent attacks on the CPI(M) were reported until the early morning of August 8 from different parts of the region. Reacting to the situation, Biman Bose, CPI(M) State secretary and Polit Bureau member, attributed the killings to Maoist extremists working together with the BUPC. On August 7, addressing a press conference, he appealed to the Trinamool Congress to resolve the issues both in Singur and in Nandigram through peaceful dialogue with the State government in the larger interest of the development and prosperity of the State. Trinamool must behave in a responsible manner in order to assist in the creation of jobs through industrialisation, he said.
Realising the urgency of the situation, Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee convened an all-party peace meeting at Tamluk, near the troubled zone, on August 9. Both Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and Biman Bose urged all parties, especially Trinamool leaders, to participate in the peace meeting to restore normalcy. The Trinamool Congress and the SUCI, its ally in Nandigram, however, refused to participate. The latter sent a letter to the Chief Minister outlining its grievances, which included the partisan behaviour of the State police, and demanding a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) inquiry into the killing of Niranjan Mandal.
According to Ashok Guria, CPI(M) leader in Nandigram and Purbo Medinipur district secretariat member of the party, the fresh spate of attacks on CPI(M) workers was intended to prevent any kind of political activity initiated by the CPI(M). The moment we started our political work after our defeat in the region, they started targeting us. They do not want us bring the true picture of their nature to the people of the region, he told Frontline.
Another disconcerting fact, according to State government sources, is the resurfacing of outsiders in Nandigram. These people who are not residents of the area are suspected Maoists allegedly training BUPC members and also planning out the attacks on the CPI(M). The very same faces of the armed outsiders who were seen during the 11 months of turmoil in Nandigram are now being seen again. They disappeared when normalcy was being restored, and suddenly they are back again, Guria told Frontline.
There is evidence for Maoist presence in Nandigram, and the Central Reserve Police Force had unearthed a landmine-manufacturing factory there. Moreover, a leaflet in Telugu laying down detailed guidelines for armed combat was discovered in November last year an indication of the presence of Maoists from Andhra Pradesh.
The Nandigram fiasco was created on the basis of a piece of misinformation in January 2007 that land would be acquired in the region for the setting up of a chemical hub. Two months later on March 14, it attracted national attention when 14 people, including two women, were killed and 75 injured in police firing in the area. With the CPI(M)-led Left Front government in the State being forced to withdraw the police from the region under political pressure from all quarters, the BUPC, under the leadership of the Trinamool, took advantage of the situation and proceeded to strengthen the liberated zone they claimed to have carved out in Nandigram.
As early as February 2007, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee himself repeatedly reassured the people of Nandigram that there would be no acquisition of their land, but the Trinamools agitation and the violence in Nandigram continued unabated.
Suhrid Sankar Chattopadhyay
