Author: Subrata Nagchoudhury
Publication: The Indian Express
Date: August 19, 2002
URL: http://www.indian-express.com/archive_full_story.php?content_id=7917
Introduction: In their war against
Naxals, West Bengal police look for victims and vent their fury on young
sympathisers
Eton Sheikh is a Class VIII student,
he has never travelled beyond his village of Bochadanga. The farthest he
could have gone is Amtala, a market place 5 km away. Last Sunday night,
a huge police contingent stormed into his village and picked him up. Their
charge: Eton was ''conspiring to wage war against the state of Bengal.''
He's in custody.
Shampa Dasgupta is the daughter
of a jute-mill worker whose mill has been closed for the past four months.
A 3rd-year student of a Kolkata college, Shampa's is the undergraduate
zeal: to work in remote villages for the Revolutionary Youth Front, a Naxalite
student wing. Last Sunday, the police picked her up from the same Bochadanga
village. Same charge: she's trying to ''conspire and wage war'' against
the government of Bengal.
It doesn't matter that this is a
CPI(M) government, led by Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya who's trying
to put forward a pro-reforms face. It doesn't matter that this government
is packed by party workers and former Naxalites who, on paper at least,
swear by dissent and political freedom.
Besides the schoolboy and the college
student, three small farmers from neighbouring areas have also been arrested
and booked for the same offence.
In its crackdown against the Naxalites
- particularly the People's War Group - these four are the state's latest
''catch,'' those who do not agree with the Marxists. For the government,
the best way to deal with them is to slap charges so serious that they
will ensure their prolonged judicial or police remand.
A visit to Bochadanga exposes the
extent of police highhandedness. Sections under the Indian Penal Code that
deal with ''sedition against the state'' (the same sections under which
British national Peter Bleach was tried and convicted for airdropping 300
AK-47 rifles in Purulia in 1995) have been slapped against the Class VIII
student, the college girl and three others.
Villagers are angry. ''We never
heard the name of PWG, we knew them as Naxals. But they never ever did
anything that should earn them a bad name. Instead, they wrested some vested
char lands from unscrupulous people and distributed them among us,'' says
a local resident.
In fact, because of this campaign
led by the Revolutionary Socialist Party - which ironically is one of the
Left's constituents in the government - there are few families here who
don't have land to cultivate.
''Coming from a poor family, Shampa
always empathised with the poor,'' says her father Nirmal Dasgupta who
met her at the Berhampore jail on Friday. He finds it hard to understand
why she has been arrested when there is no ban on her group.
Relatives of Eton say the boy was
asked to stay back in his house while they - some of them are elected functionaries
of the RSP - went to attend a marriage. They are more upset about the manner
in which policemen from the local police station visited the village after
the raid and got blank papers signed by at least three villagers. ''We
refused to sign but they forced us. If there is an independent inquiry,
we will definitely say this,'' says Israel Malithy, a farmer in his 40s.
This was seconded by Habibur Rehman Mondal, another farmer in his 40s.
When contacted, the officer-in-charge at the local police station at Naoda,
Shyama Prasad Saha, said: ''I can't speak to the press.''
Superintendent of Police, Murshidabad,
Virendra was hard put to explain the charges. ''Their basic objective was
to capture state power. They were certainly up to something. Or, why should
they assemble in such a remote village and escape at the sight of the police?''
he asked.
''They aren't accused of political
murders,'' Virendra said, adding: ''They are trying to set up their own
system, an own justice system. Besides, there were cases of arms snatching
and recovery of arms in recent times.