Lavpur Gang Rape: Ruling Party’s Khap Panchayat is the Culprit

Kolkata, 22^nd January, 2014: The brutal gang-rape of a tribal girl in Lavpur in Birbhum district has exposed not only the deterioration of law and order in the state, but also how the rural Bengal has come under savage rule of Trinamool Congress.

The incident took place on January 21, in Subalpur village. It is a shocking incident where a kangaroo court was summoned to decide on the fate of the girl who had an affair with a boy of another community. The so-called ‘arbitration court’ asked for a hefty fine for the ‘crime’. As the family of the girl declared their inability to pay the ransom, an ‘order’ was passed to rape the girl. Some 12 to 13 people raped the girl in the village itself. The medical test also proved that the girl was indeed gang-raped.

As the details began to come to light, it was proved that the signatories to the order of the ‘fine’ included local Trinamool panchayat member, a non-tribal. Two other TMC leaders were also involved in the crime, both of whom were non-tribal. Ajoy Mondal, the panchayat member feigned ignorance until his signatures were exposed in the media. Another TMC leader, Debraj Mondal reportedly used his video to shoot the crime. It was not an “adivasi practice” at all, but the handiwork of a gang of criminals, using the fake and unjust ‘arbitration’.

In a typically Mamata-administration’s way of handling atrocities against the women, the police did not seek the remand of 13 accused even after arresting them. In the process, very important medical tests of the culprits and other necessary details were skipped. With huge condemnation of the act, the chief minister ordered the transfer of the district police superintendent and police was forced to appeal to court again to take the accused into their remand. Meanwhile, in a suo moto action, the Supreme Court has ordered the Birbhum district judge to conduct an enquiry of his own and submit report to the apex court.

The incident, coming only weeks after the gruesome murder of a rape victim in Madhyamgram, sparked a spontaneous protest in the state. AIDWA, DYFI, SFI, CITU and other organisations protested through road blockades and rallies throughout the state.

A Left Front delegation led by the leader of the opposition Surya Kanta Misra went to see the raped girl at the Siuri Hospital. Mishra talked with the victim and her mother and then met the hospital superintendent. The delegation also visited Subalpur village. Misra lamented that the Panchayat administration of West Bengal, for which the state was known to the researchers from all across the country and even overseas, for which the state was proud of, has now turned in to the ‘Khap’ Panchayat of the ruling Trinamool Congress. He said that there is no other instance of such brutality in the history of this state.

Left Front chairman and CPI(M) state secretary Biman Basu has condemned the incident and has demanded exemplary punishment for the miscreants. He said the security and honour of the women in the state has been trampled. It seems that the state was moving towards the medieval era. The All India Democratic Women’s Organisation has also condemned this brutal barbaric act. Besides demanding justice, they said there was not a single day in West Bengal without any incident of atrocity on women taking place. They have demanded security arrangement for the tribal woman and her family members. 

AIDWA Demands Action in the Gang-Rape case of Adivasi Girl

The following is the press statement issued by the All India Democratic Women’s Association on January 23:

It is shocking that not a day passes in West Bengal without one or the other incident of violence against women. The latest incident has taken place in Labhpur, Birbhum on January 21, when a 20 year-old adivasi girl from the village of Rajrampur was abducted and gang-raped by 12 persons from the same village as she had dared to have a relationship with a non-tribal boy. This was done after a kangaroo-court called apparently by some village elders sought to extract a fine of Rs 50,000 from the girl’s family for this supposed offence, and the family pleaded their inability to pay the same. The couple were reportedly brought before the kangaroo-court bound hand and foot and even after the boy pleaded that he wanted to marry the girl, the perpetrators ignored him and gave the verdict for the girl to be raped as a punishment by those present. She was dragged to an adjoining room and attacked by a number of persons from her own village, and left severely injured in front of her house. The next day she went with her mother and lodged an FIR at Labhpur Thana, after which she was admitted to the PHC and then shifted to Siuri District Hospital. The police have so far arrested 11 persons on the basis of the FIR. The AIDWA has led a deputation to the SP and several protest rallies have been conducted against the growing atmosphere of insecurity, especially for women in West Bengal.

Although some arrests have been made in this particular case, it is necessary that the administration makes immediate arrangements for the full security of the survivor and her family. All the perpetrators and instigators must be arrested and a proper investigation conducted.  It is increasingly the case in several districts of West Bengal including Birbhum that there is a growing atmosphere of violence, with gangs of armed anti-socials taking the law in their own hands. This is because many of them enjoy the political patronage of the ruling party, as a result of which the police and the administration turn a blind eye to them. Consequently, lawlessness has been increasing at all levels, since there is now a feeling that such crimes can go unpunished. The AIDWA expresses its grave concern about the situation, and stands by all those who are victims of the growing crimes against women in the state. 

VILLAGERS CHASE AWAY ARMED GANG OF ‘MAOISTS’ AT LALGARH

FOUR ASSASSINS KILLED, SEVERAL INJURED

LALGARH,18th SEPTEMBER,2009: At Lalgarh in Midnapore west, where the Trinamuli-‘Maoist’ depredations including gruesome killings and abductions have continued apace, joint forces ops or not, a thin, bright, streak of glow lit up the political scenario in the laterite zone late into the night of 18 September. It was an example of an illumined class struggle all the way.

THE ATTACK
A large gang of Trinamulis and ‘Maoist’ criminals chose to attack the Dasbandh village to the north of Ramgarh in the Lalgarh locale. The hamlet is principally inhabited in by goalas of the ancient line of caste of cattle herders. Recent times had seen the villagers choose to grit their teeth and -- boldly refuse to cooperate with either the Chhatradhar Mahato-led right reactionary Trinamulis or the left sectarian and the heavily-armed, ‘Maoist’ gangsters.

Devoid of shelter, the ‘Maoist’ goons issued a threat earlier in the day that representatives of the goala community including the Mondol or the village headman must be present from Dasbandh village at the next ‘squad meeting’ of the ‘Maoists.’ None of the rural folk of the village heeded the notice.

As an act if avenging their wrath as well as a fulfilment of a step towards ‘teaching the goalas a good lesson,’ 20-odd armed ‘Maoists’ entered the village and knocked on the door of Luba Mondol and his son Dhanu Mondal – neither of whom were in their hutment but had chosen to go to the deep of the jungles to collect firewood as is the custom, as we know it, in the jangal mahal, to avoid the fierce daylight heat.

THE RESISTANCE
As soon as the killers knocked down the flimsy piece of slattened plank that passed off as the ‘door’ of the hut, the two women remaining inside woke up from their sleep, thought for a while -- and then must have decided that life would not get any better if resistance now was made -- they rushed out with swinging large dahs with which they split open dry coconuts. The bravura of the attackers vanished – and they ran, and ran. The room to flee had by then closed up.

For, by that time the entire village had woken up at the ruckus and hundreds of goalas came streaming out of their hutments with whatever they could lay their hands on. At close quarters the sten guns that the attackers carried was of little use as body conduct range developed and the beatings began. At the end of the heroic resistance, three of the attackers lay dead, while the ‘rearguard’ of the ‘Maoist’ squad managed to drag away two more bodies. A dozen-odd villagers were critically injured and had since been removed to district hospitals.


MASS RESISTANCE STARTS
The forests throbbed with the cheering that arose from the throats of the relived villagers. A new chapter of resistance to known criminals and hardened killers has perhaps started in the form of mass resistance in the forest range in western Bengal.

It should be added that the entire village is a stronghold of the CPI (M), and the rural folk knew that despite the strong if disoriented presence of the ‘joint forces’ in the vastness that is the jangal mahal, 12 CPI (M) workers and sympathizers had been killed in the vicinity over the past two weeks. Among those killed very recently had been the school teacher comrade Kartick Mahato, and CPI (M) workers, comrades Krishna Kundu, and Sambhu Mahato. That did not deter them from putting the class enemy on the run.

In a related development, the ‘joint forces’ uncovered a ‘sleeper cell’ of the ‘Maoist’ goons in the household of a well-known physician of Kantapahari named Jatin Pratihar. Jatin would provide food, shelter, and funds to the top brass of the ‘Maoist’ killers and perhaps it was this place, the shelter was in the shape of a well-appointed air-cooled ‘cellar’ below the ground level under his palatial residential building, that facilitated the ‘Maoists’ to operate their electronic NetCom through which they interacted with one another and also kept a cosy touch with the bourgeois media.

Jatin’s wife Sulekha, also in police custody as we write this, has been a senior worker of the local unit of the ICDS and there, at the work place, she would use threats to make the women workers pay up regularly for the ‘incidental expenditures’ incurred by the ‘guests’ who would come and go, to and from the Pratihar ‘cell.’ Two other ‘Maoist’ hooligans were arrested from the Pratihar house, the police tell us, as we file this report.

KILLING IN JADAVPUR
The murderous attacks on CPI (M) workers and sympathisers have started in Jadavpur, post the Lok Sabha elections. During the night of 17 September comrade Dilip Dhara, a close supporter of the CPI (M) and a youth organisation member was battered to death and his two young comrades, Joydeb Mondal and Totan Halder were left critically injured at Chhit-Kalikapur in east Jadavpur.

These young men, for a long time now, had been the targets of the assassins who are known for their far-from-tenuous links with the Trinamulis. The trio of murdered youth ran tea shops, and were in the habit of rising in protest, taking along them the people, against all forms of anti-social activities. Bengal state secretary of the CPI (M) Biman Basu has condemned the killing.(INN)

Maoists-Jharkhandis Burn Alive Three-Year Old

DHANIAKHALI(HOOGHLY): Three-year-old Sumana Mandi, daughter of CPI(M) panchayat member Loncho Mandi was burnt to a horrible end with a mixture of petrol and kerosene lit with a fatal matchstick. The child died screaming in extreme pain.

The incident took place on February 22, 2009 at a small hamlet in Dhaniakhali in Hooghly. Sumana’s mother Jharna could be of little help as she too had been set upon, bound up, and then lit up with burning fuel in another corner in the hutment. She is at present fighting for her life at a local hospital.

It was to be an otherwise peaceful country evening with the reverberating sound of conchshells welcoming the evening. Loncho, a khet mazdoor, escaped as he was away attending to some urgent panchayat business. The attackers came in an armed group of fifteen.

Biman Basu, senior CPI(M) leader said that the heinous act proved how desperate the right-left opposition had become as the Lok Sabha elections approached. CPI(M) leaders Mitali Kumar and Bharati Mukherjee rushed to the spot and condoled the death in the bereaved family and also looked after the treatment of the burn injuries of Jharna. Statewide protest rallies have been held to castigate the inhuman act. It is learnt that the Disam group of the Jharkhandis were involved in the attack along with Maoists and Trinamulis.

Elsewhere at Raina in Burdwan, Comrade Nurul Islam, a CPI(M) worker, succumbed to his fatal injuries after battling for life for seven days. Comrade Nurul had been brutally attacked by goons in the hire of the Trinamul Congress. Comrade Nurul led the resistance but was felled by many bullets.

Adivasis getting commando style training in West Bengal

Bankura-Purulia border (West Bengal), Jan.10 (ANI): Over one thousand Adivasi men and women are being given 'commando' training in Taldanga village on the Bankura-Purulia border in West Bengal. At a war camp which began on January 7, the men and women were given theoretical and practical training in using traditional weapons to attack as well as defend.

Armed with bows and arrows, spades and hammers, the Adivasis are training rigorously, under Maoist guidance, to protect themselves from those who are eroding democratic values and suppressing their rights. They raise the 'Red Salute' (Lal Salaam) with pride and take oath to attack and defend in firm, strong voices.

They make it clear that they would no longer take things lying down and that they have lost faith in the country's law and order machinery. Giving the example of the de-robing of a young Adivasi girl in Guwahati during a peaceful rally on Nov 24, 2007, the participants at the war camp say that they have reached the end of their patience, particularly after the Assam incidence. The sheer apathy of the majority was obvious then, they say, adding that many were busy taking pictures instead of protecting the girl.

The Adivasis are convinced that the police and administration become mute spectators when they are abused, or when their lands are snatched away, or when they are killed across the country. Even in Bengal, CPI(M) cadres have regularly tried to exploit and suppress the backward tribals by attacking and killing, the participants alleged. For 59 years we have waited and observed, claimed Sitaram Azad, a representative of the Jharkhand Desam Party.

But nothing was done for our rights. We are now not going to get insulted, abused, exploited or killed quietly, we will fight those who come to attack us ourselves, he adds. Adivasis from seven states, including Jharkhand, Bihar, Orissa, West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, Chattisgarh and Assam are participating in the ongoing camp. The camp organizers refused to divulge the duration of the camp.

The Adivasis are also disillusioned with the role of political parties. They allege that whenever a political party took up their cause, it was with a vested agenda. Now, they say, they have united under the banner of the 'Jharkhand Desam Party' to fight for their rights, not through just words, but also through action if need be. The participants said that whenever they had defended themselves by picking up their own arms, they have prevailed, but dependence on the law enforcers of the country has always seen the adivasis being victimized in any situation.

Though the impression is that the JDP is a regular outfit, there is no hiding the fact that its totally backed by Maoists. The participants of the war camp take oath in true Maoist fashion, raising the 'Red Salute'. They also say tribal prayers.

The adivasis are marching to war drum beats in commando fashion. Their weapons may be crude and traditional but the spirit to fight, to attack and defend, is as strong as any skilled operator. State governments across the country are napping in ignorant bliss while this backward, suppressed class is preparing steadily for a war to capture their rights and get recognition in India.

By Ajitha Menon (ANI)