INTERNECINE STRUGGLE WITHIN TRINAMULIS, ‘MAOISTS’ INTENSIFY

ONE KILLED AT SONACHURA

KOLKATA,23rd SEPTEMBER,2009: The killing of Nishikanta Mondal, the self-styled ‘terror of Sonachura,’ and the chief suspect in the brutal murder of comrade Sankar Samanta, has been condemned by Bengal state secretary of the CPI (M) Biman Basu who has also characterised the assassination as a direct fall-out of Trinamuli inner strife with a ‘Maoist’ conspiratorial connection visible.

At the same time, Biman, speaking to PD, was of the view that taking advantage of the death, the Trinamulis, of both factions, led respectively by the Abu Taher-Subhendu Adhikary clique and Mondal himself, had started to run riot, stepping up their misdeeds, not only at Sonachura where they already had unleashed a reign of terror, but also in adjoining Nandigram and Khejuri.

For a long time now, normalcy has been rare in the Nandigram-Khejuri-Sonachura localities. CPI (M) and LF workers have been repeatedly subjected to murderous assaults here and very many have been rendered homeless at the behest of the Trinamulis and the ‘Maoists.’ At the same time the latest fall-out amongst the Trinamulis over allocation of funds for the GP’s they run, had recently reached a fatal peak.

COUNTER-DEMOCRATIC ACTS
The gang of rank opportunists, the self-styled ‘Maoists’ joined in the fray for the loot – and the struggle turned bloody. Nishikanta was en route to some spot when at a desolate place his cell phone rang. The moment he stopped the motorbike he was riding to respond, shots rang out from the bushes – four found the target.

The assassination ‘format’ if it could be so-called strongly resembled a piece of ‘Maoist’ action, perhaps this time as an act of hired goons of one section of the Trinamulis, the section which had become vocal about the defalcation of money by Mondal -- and had led a deputation against him at the level of the district administration.

Biman Basu expressed his deep disapproval of the counter-democratic acts of commission being perpetrated by the ‘rainbow coalition’ of the Trinamulis, the SUCI, and the ‘Maoists’ in these areas, and he called upon all democratic-minded people to rise in sturdy denunciation of what had been going on for quite some time now in the Nandigram-Sonachura-Khejuri region.

MASS RESISTANCE AGAINST MAOIST ATTACKS DEVELOPS AT MIDNAPORE WEST

EIGHT ‘MAOISTS’ KILLED

MIDNAPORE,22th SEPTEMBER,2009: They came to loot and burn, and they came to kill. They had to leave in a hurry in the face of stiff resistance, mass resistance, from thousands of rural folk who were determined to defend the Enayetpur CPI (M) office in Midnapore west. Biman Basu speaking to PD said that the ‘people had maintained, successfully, the sanctity of a Party office above which the Red Flag flutters.’

BIG LIE
The big lie is now spread that CPI (M) members have been killed during the incident that stretched well into the night of 21-22 September. ‘This is an exercise in Goebbelsian media attack, where a lie spoken big, repeatedly, is expected to be accepted as the truth,’ commented Biman.

The CPI (M) leader added to comment that the bourgeois media and its patrons in the ruling classes were fond of dubbing the dastardly attack on the tribals and members of the scheduled castes by the outlander ‘Maoists’ from across the border as a ‘Santhal rebellion’: ‘they do not know history and are only interested in putting out their own class-distorted version of events taking place.’

MASS RESISTANCE
What happened at Enayetpur commenced when around five in the afternoon – it was already by then dark in the jangal mahal as the short autumnal day rolled in – a large number of killers trooped in, and their clear, pre-decided aim was to burn the local CPI (M) office, which, Biman reminded us, also acted as the shelter for those ousted from their home-and-hearth in nearby localities by the ‘Maoist’-Trinamuli nexus if goons and hoods. Thus, he pointed out, a successful attack would have proved nothing short of a human tragedy of great proportions as the ‘Maoist’ hired killers are loathe to take prisoners.

As soon as the gangs of armed killers approached the CPI (M) office, firing automatic weapons in the air, holding aloft lit torches, and swinging along large jerry cans filled with kerosene, they ran into a solid wall of maybe ten thousand local villagers, lathis, dahs, and staves at the ready. It was simply a case of resist or be butchered. A struggle ensued that carried on well into the evening. The ‘Maoist’ killers, self-styled experts as they are in the criminal act of individual assassination, had not known before what mass fury constitutes.

After a brief hand-to-hand, close body contact struggle the ‘Maoists’ and their Trinamuli lackeys ran away. More than thirty of the villagers were left severely injured. The ‘Maoist’ attackers lost at least eight persons, dragging their wounded and the rest of the dead away as is their practice.

A large contingent of the police of the ‘joint forces’ did make an appearance when the fracas was over and pleaded that the unknown terrain, the pitch-black darkness of the roads also rendered impassable, unfamiliarity of the surroundings, and discretionary caution had prevented then from appearing earlier. Which, we believe, was sad but by no means have we considered the police action or lack of it, completely devoid of rationale.

SQUABBLING
Elsewhere the inner-squabbling between once-beloved-of-each-other ‘Maoists’ and Jharkhandis saw another step mounted as the former killed in cold blood three local level leaders of the latter outfit at Belpahari. In a related development, Asit Sarkar, a ‘theoretician’ of the ‘Maoists’ and later a leader of a breakaway Belpahari-based faction of the outfit was brutally done to death in the dark of the night of 20 September.

In the meanwhile, at Sundarpur village in Murshidabad, the happiness of the Eid day was tragically robbed of its glad-tidings when a CPI (M) worker, comrade Zachariah Sheikh was hacked to a painful demise in broad daylight by goons of the Pradesh Congress. Comrade Zachariah had been instrumental among those CPI (M) workers who had toiled hard to ensure a runaway win, after decades, for the CPI (M), at the Sundarpur Gram Panchayat this time around.

The same evening at Indus in Bankura, a CITU leader, Naba Ghosh was attacked and left with heavily bleeding injuries by the hoodlums in the pay and protection of the Trinamulis. Nanda is recovering in a local health centre. (INN)

THE DISGUSTING PLAY-ACTING ON RAIL TRACKS

KOLKATA,20th SEPTEMBER: First she announced that she would ‘change everything’ about the Indian Railways. Then she, with great fanfare, and at great cost, ‘spend more,’ overtly or otherwise, is after all the neo-liberal economic mantra, ‘flagged off’ train after old-coach-laden tired-looking train, with the loco running staff standing petrified in horrors and apprehensions of various kinds. The Bengal Governor was ‘pleased to be’ present, as always, on every occasion, as were the squads of various central ministers of differing rankings, plus the Trinamuli ‘intellectuals.’

Then, more recently, she did something that would call for, we confess, real courage, if desperation can be equated with courage in these distressing times for her as the web-and-waft of the jockeying for the mayoral positions for the Siliguri Municipal Corporation surely gets her nervy and worse.

She brought out condemned coaches of the various Delhi-Howrah-Delhi trains, had the exteriors painted in horrifically garish ‘psychedelic’ colours -- reminding us of the days when an anarchist ‘hippie’ culture had ruled the roost in capitalist Europe and the US -- and gloatingly passed off such a poor, dilapidated ensemble of a train as the ‘irrepressibly fast’ duronto in Bengali, express train that would run non-stop to and fro Delhi-Howrah, except for fuel stoppages.

The very first run proved a disaster. The creaking coaches would not be moved initially. A new engine was brought in, with no results. An engine of another more popular Delhi-bound train was uncoupled and put to push the ‘irrepressible.’ This time a snail’s pace was observed – only up to the local Dankuni station, an embarrassingly few kilometres away when the worn-out train gave up the ghost.

That yet another engine managed to pull the train staggeringly away in some manner to Delhi, well behind schedule, does not detract from the fact that the chieftain is playing dangerously, recklessly with the lives of passengers, safety be damned, and this was especially evident when one saw that after the third time ‘flag off,’ the train pulled irrepressibly away ignoring a Red signal – or was it a symbolic gesture on the minister’s part?

By B PRASANT(INN)

TRINAMULI GOONS WRECK CPI (M) BOOK STALL, LEAVE SEVERAL INJURED

KOLKATA,20th SEPTEMBER,2009: Downtown Kolkata was after a long period the scene of Trinamuli intransigence. A book stall put up by the National Book Agency, the publication outlet of the Bengal CPI (M), a popular exercise and which has a history of setting up such book stalls, come the festival seasons, for more that four decades, was the focus of all-out attack by the local Trinamuli hoods. This most recent incident of Trinamuli depredation in the heart of Kolkata, happened during the daylight hours of 19 September -- and the imbroglio still continues as we file this report.

The fracas started when the Trinamuli goons, armed with one-shot ‘countrymade’ rifles and pistols, short-handled scythes, sledge hammers, and iron staves jumped on the NBA stall, completely wrecked it, and put up the Trinamuli colours plus the inevitable picture of the ‘supreme one of their’ outfit.

On being told of the dastardly, cowardly assault, the members of the adjoining local units of the CPI (M) and of the mass organisations, especially the youth front, came out in strident protest – and promptly found themselves heavily outnumbered by the armed hoodlums some of whose loyalties have recently changed back to Pradesh Congress as the local leadership has shifted political space away from the Trinamulis.

Those injured included the secretary of one of the local committees of the zone, as well as at least a dozen CPI (M) workers, including three women cadres who were especially targeted, had their faces smashed in, and had to be hospitalised – but only after the local people chose to put an end to the neo-fascist attack by ranging themselves against the attackers and throwing the gauntlet before them. The hoods chose discretion as the better part of valour and took off, fast.

Later on, the stall was refurbished and put up, Red Flag fluttering from the top – normalcy has been restored thanks to mass intervention.