Author: Navin Upadhyay
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: July 8, 2007
Nandigram killings
An independent fact-finding team headed by
Justice M Ramakrishna, former Chief Justice of Jammu and Kashmir and Assam,
has described as "holocaust" the killing of villagers at Nandigram
on March 13-14 and has said that the West Bengal Government remained either
a silent spectator or acted at the behest of CPI(M) cadres.
The report regrets the Centre's failure to
direct the State Government to restore normalcy and claims that more than
1,000 people were injured and hundreds killed in the violence.
The 70-page report, submitted to President
APJ Abdul Kalam on Saturday, paints a hair-raising picture of atrocity perpetrated
by the CPI(M) cadre on women, children and elders.
Titled Justice on Trial, the report also highlights
the police atrocity at Singur.
Based on the accounts of eyewitnesses, depositions
made by victims, NGOs, doctors, officials and the CPM cadre, the report says
that, "it is more than enough to support our view of inaction on the
part of the West
Talking to Sunday Pioneer Justice Soni described
the Nandigram killings as "genocide" and said that the inaction
of the Bengal Government was a shameful act of collusion with perpetrators.
"We were horrified to hear of the plight of Nandigram victims. It was
a most gruesome account of State-sponsored terror," he said. The report
quotes eyewitness accounts to tell you how drunk CPM men pounced on women
like beasts to strip and rape them. "They pinched their breasts, slapped
their buttocks and injured their private organs," the report says.
The wounds were so deep that when the fact-finding
team visited Nandigram on April 17, more than a month after the violence,
the victims showed their unhealed injuries to the team's women members. Rubbishing
State Government figure of those killed in police firing, the report says
that after the police's autocratic action "with hundreds killed, injured
and missing and the males attending to the injured, the village looked desolate."
Talking of the administration's complicity,
the report says no complaints of rape were recorded and no medical checks
conducted of victims." According to Nandigram residents, doctors were
instructed by CPM goons and the state machinery that they shall neither record
the complaint of rape nor certify and examine rape injured," the report
says.
The report cites the case of an injured person
who remained unconscious for four days following a brutal assault on him by
the CPM cadres but the police only recorded a case of superficial injury.
It points out that even a month after the incident the CPM men were exploding
bombs and firing indiscriminately to terrorise the villagers to give up their
lands.
Highlighting the role of the police in the
Singur brutality, the report cited the example of a two-and-a-half-year-old
girl Payal who was chargesheeted for attempt to murder under Section 307 of
the IPC had to undergo custody for 10 days before the High Court released
her on bail. Interestingly, the team found support from some CPM leaders and
Socialist Unity Centre of India who supplied them material about the administration's
inaction, and told them that CPM goons mingled with the police wearing police
uniform and killed the villagers.
It quotes Dr Subhash Dasgupta, leader of the
medical team which treated the injured, to say that 1,173 persons were treated
for injuries within three days of the violence. The report recommends transfer
of cases to neighbouring States.