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Mainstream, Vol. XLIX No 6 , January 29, 2011

A Visit to the Killing Field of Netai

Monday 31 January 2011, by D. Bandyopadhyay

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Netai is a medium-sized village situated deep inside Jungle Mahal of West Bengal’s West Midnapore district and on the banks of the river Kangsabati, locally known as Kasai. The popu-lation of the village is around 2000. The villagers’ main occupation is agriculture. The area is famous for winter vegetables because of their quality and size. It is about 3.5 km from Lalgarh town.

It had been a peaceful area. There was no intrusion from the armed Maoist groups. Except during the height of the anti-police agitation of the People’s Committee Against Police Atrocities (PCAPA), it had been a CPI-M village. But after the agitation the party felt rather uncertain about the loyalty of the population to the CPI-M.

In early December 2010, the villagers were shocked and surprised to find that about 25 armed outsiders had come and established a camp in the pucca residential building of Rathin Dandapat, a CPI-M member. Elders of the village went to the local CPI-M leader, Abani Singh, to find out why armed outsiders had come to stay in the village. They were told not to get worried and alarmed. The armed camp had to be establi-shed here to prevent any possible aggression by the Maoists and Trinamulis. The village elders replied that the CRPF patrol visited them at least thrice a week and since then there had not been any dacoity, not even any major theft. The villagers were quite happy with this arrange-ment; so what was the need for an armed camp of outsiders inside the village? The stern reply was that the Party (CPM) leadership was aware of secret agents of the Opposition groups working among the villagers to create problems during the elections. Such elements had to be watched and eliminated so that there would not be any problem for the Party (CPM) at the time of voting. Then he assured the villagers that he was there and if they had any problem with the armed outsiders, he should be informed and he would take appropriate steps to redress their grievances.

Though not fully assured and quite apprehen-sive about the activities of these harmads,1 they came back without creating any further trouble.

Within a couple of days their apprehension came true. The harmads demanded that the villagers should cook their food in Dandapat’s house. The local party leadership allotted rotational duties to different families to do the cooking. Then came the demand that the camp should be supplied with their daily rice requirements and fresh vegetables. By now the villagers understood the true character of these harmads, but what could they do? They complied. Then came a very strange order that the villagers had to provide night guards for the camp, so that there might not be any surprise attack on them. Severe winter had set in. Nights became very cold. But they could not ignore the “command” because they knew that non-compliance would result in instant reprisal. So night guard squads were formed with the local youth to do the job. Resentment among the villagers began mounting but none dared to challenge the armed harmads. So they continued to suffer silently.

They were told that the village young men should undergo arms training because the harmads would move to some other place. Hence the local armed young men should take over the task of the harmads. That was the last straw on the camel’s back. Mothers refused to send their sons for arms training fearing that when these harmads would move away, the police would come and arrest them for having illegal firearms in their possession; that apart, for any dacoity or robbery anywhere in the neighbouring villages the police would come and apprehend them, thereby totally disrupting their normal avocation and life. Women gathered spontaneously and approached Abani Singh to stop this.

ON January 7, 2011, a large group of woman accosted Abani and asked him to redeem his promise to redress their grievance against the harmads. Abani Singh told them to accompany him to talk to the leaders of the harmads to discuss the matter. So a large crowd of women, followed by the menfolk, approached the camp with Abani Singh in the lead. As they stopped near Dandapat’s house, the harmads got alarmed. They sent messages to the harmad camps in the neighbouring villages to send reinforcement as they thought they were under siege. But they did not wait for the reinforcement to arrive. To disperse the crowd they started firing. Seven bodies fell down dead and twenty others were injured, some of them critically.

This incident took place around 8.30 am on January 7, 2011. Messages were sent to the Lalgarh Police Station to send the police force. Trinamul MP Subhendu Adhikary himself contacted the officer-in-charge of the Police Station five times with no effect. He rang up the Additional SP thrice and the District Magistrate once. He was told the police would not go without a written “ejahar”(complaint). Such was the complicity of the police force with the crime. The police reached the spot four-and-a-half hours later. Not only that, ambulances sent from Midnapore to pick up the injured and bring them to the Medical College hospital were stopped at Lalgarh by

CPI-M cadres to that the injured could not be brought to the hospital in time. It was later on found that five persons died mainly because of severe blood loss. These deaths could have been prevented had the ambulances reached the site of the incident in time. In CPI-M ruled West Bengal, the laws of the land are not followed, not to say anything about the laws of war and the Rules of Engagement. The Indian Arms Act, the Indian Penal Code, the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, the Criminal Procedure Code stand suspended in CPI-M ruled West Bengal. The police in the State have forgotten that under the law they are to prevent occurrence of any cognisable offence. They should remember that after the change of regime they would have to face the charge of gross dereliction of duty and complicity with the occurrence of such crimes.

On January 11, 2011 a delegation of the Citizens’ Forum Against Violence and Terror, West Bengal visited Netai village. Among the members were Shaoli Mitra, Arpita Ghosh, Bratya Basu (theatre personalities), Joy Goswami (poet), Subhaprasanna, Shipra Bhattacharyya Samir Aich (painters), Chaitali Dutta, Anup Bandyopadhyay, Amitava Datta (educationists) and many other civil society activists. This author as the President of the Forum was a part of this delegation. What we found was heart-rending. Villagers were still in a state of shock. A large number of women, who had lost their husbands and sons in the firing on January 7, started crying. We felt so helpless. We were livid with anger at the site of the wanton violence committed on totally innocent villagers who had gone with a local CPI-M leader with a plea. (Inci-dentally, as soon as an altercation started between the harmads and the villagers, this CPI-M leader, Abani Singh, disappeared.) We saw eight clear bullet marks on the wall of Laltu Dandapat’s house. Laltee is the brother-in-law of Rathin Dandapat. We found a few strands of hair struck on that wall with some dried jelly-like substance. We were told that the hair belonged to a lady whose head was blown off from her body by a mortar bomb fired by the harmads; and the jelly-like substance was part of the brain. Anger and sorrow made the villagers dumb.

Shyamal Chakraborty, a State-level CPI-M leader, said that Maoists had attacked the camp where a few shelterless people had taken shelter and that there were bullet marks on the outer walls of Rathin Dandapat’s house. This is an utter lie. We visited the house. We saw that due to improper maintenance plasters in some places had come off. And that was along a window lintel as it often happens in any house which is not regularly maintained. There was no bullet mark at all. This was a typical instance of false-hood indulged in by the CPI-M when they are caught on the wrong foot to divert the attention of the public. Even in this state of grief and anguish the villagers only demanded that the culprits should be arrested and brought to justice. One could feel the heat of their outrage, fury and anger. All them were absolutely positive that there was no firing from the opposite side. It is a false propaganda unleashed by the CPI-M and their own media to shift the blame to the Maoists. The villagers were totally unarmed and the women stood before Dandapat’s house with folded hands to place their submission.

The narrative recorded here is based entirely on what the villagers had told us not so coherently but by bits and pieces. It is their story that I have tried to recapture and place on record.

Post Script: Till the day of our visit to Netai village, no serious police inquiry had started and no culprit was apprehended. Since the delegation’s trip to the site two critically injured women succumbed to their injuries thus bringing the death toll to nine.

FOOTNOTE

1. Hermad is a Bengali corruption of the word ‘armada’. In the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries,

Portuguese river pirates used to come in a number of fast-moving boats causing depredation in properous riverine habitats of Bengal and carry off with men, women and children to be sold as slaves in different parts of India and abroad. The Portuguese pirates were described as harmads in Bengali in the coastal regions of the State.

The author is a former Secretary of Revenue and Rural Development, Government of India. He served in West Bengal as the Commissioner of Land Reforms and was the architect of ‘Operation Barga’, the most important achievement of the Left Front Government in the State. He is currently the President of the Citizens’ Forum Against Violence and Terror in West Bengal.

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