SFI Leader Brutally Killed

Kolkata, 21^st January, 2014: SFI leader Saifuddin Mollah was brutally murdered in Baruipur, South 24 Parganas district on 19th January. Saifuddin, a post graduate student,  was the president of Baruipur 2 rural local committee of SFI and was returning to his home in Sitakundu Bazar from a public meeting addressed by Suryakanta Mishra, the leader of opposition in the West Bengal assembly. He was forcibly kidnapped by Trinamool Congress goons and taken to a secluded place. He was mercilessly beaten, the entire body showed signs of savage torture. The news of his kidnapping reached to his family also and his brother rushed out to search for him. He even reached to the spot but was cordoned by the TMC assassins. Saifuddin was severely injured and was craving for a drop of water. But his brother was not allowed to do so. Meanwhile, the police was informed but they reached to the spot almost after two hours. Police brought Saifuddin to hospital where he was declared ‘brought dead’.

Saifuddin Mollah was the son of a poor family; he supported his studies by teaching in a local coaching centre. He was very popular among the school students at the centre. A well-behaved and always available for social work, Saifuddin was a popular figure in the area. He was a member of CPI(M). He was only 23.

This murder once again brought the memory of SFI leader Sudipta Gupta, who faced death in police custody on 02nd April, 2013. Sudipta was taken into custody when SFI organised a militant demonstration demanding holding of students’ union elections in the state.

Saifuddin Mollah was killed at a time when an all-out attack is being perpetrated against SFI in West Bengal. Elections to students’ unions are taking place in the state. In most of the colleges, TMC has not allowed any opposition organisation to contest. SFI activists were attacked, beaten mercilessly in many colleges in Kolkata, North 24 Parganas, South 24 Parganas, Hooghly, Nadia, Siliguri, South Dinajpur, Maldaha. TMC goons, with active support from police, have virtually seized the colleges and universities and SFI could contest only after bloodshed wherever possible.

Suryakanta Misra went to meet the family of Saifuddin on the next day. He was accompanied by CPI(M) district secretary Sujan Chakraborty, Party leaders Abdur Rezzak Mollah, Kanti Ganguly and others. The parents of the martyr broke down and asked whether attending a CPI(M) rally is a crime! In fact, the entire village raised the same question. The young students of the coaching centre were seen crying and lamented that now their dear teacher has been murdered they would be rendered orphan. Misra went to the coaching centre and assured that the studies would be continued. CPI(M) will help in maintaining the centre.

SFI and DYFI organised a protest march in Kolkata and blocked the main thoroughfare of the city. SFI all India general secretary Ritabrata Banerjee was present in the march.  A protest day was observed throughout the state on 21st January.

The central executive committee of SFI in a statement  condemned the killing and said, this incident reflects the perils that democracy today finds itself in the state of West Bengal. Since the 2011 assembly elections 143 left supporters and activists have been killed. Resistance to the attacks on the democratic rights and civil liberties of citizens in the state has become important for ensuring democracy throughout the country.

SFI Protests Bengal Comrade’s Murder

The CEC of SFI also expressed solidarity with the brave and heroic struggles students in Bengal. On January 21, the Dehradun district unit of the Students Federation of India (SFI) took out a procession in the city, the capital town of Uttarakhand, in protest against the brutal murder of Comrade Saifuddin Mollah of the SFI in West Bengal, and burnt an effigy of the Bengal chief minister Ms Mamata Banerjee in the DBS College grounds. It was the Trinamool goons who attacked Comrade Mollah with sticks and clubs and thus murdered him. The SFI has demanded the resignation of the Mamata Banerjee government that has patronised the attacks on SFI and other democratic organisations in the past as well.

SFI leader's death: Govt sits on rights body suggestion

TNN | Oct 29, 2013, 04.47 AM IST

KOLKATA: The Mamata Banerjee government is sitting on the West Bengal Human Rights Commission (WBHRC) recommendations yet again.

The WBHRC directed the government to pay Rs 10 lakh as compensation to the bereaved family ofSFI leader Sudipto Gupta, who was killed in police custody while being taken to Alipore Jail. The government didn't take any action on the August 26 order on the plea that the matter is lying with the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC).

The SFI leader died on April 2 while being taken to the Presidency jail along with other protesters. The very next day, WBHRC took up the case suo-motu on media reports. During inquiry, the commission found that police had used a bus to take the protesters to jail and it was being driven by a driver who did not posses a driving licence. Subsequently, the commission directed the state to pay the compensation.

However section 35 (I) of Protection of Human Rights Act 1993 states: "The Commission shall not inquire into any matter which is pending before a State Commission or any other Commission duly constituted under any law for the time being in force." WBHRC members wondered how could the NHRC take up the matter when it was being probed by the state body.

According to sources from the state secretariat, the government had written to the NHRC about a month ago, asking for clarification from the commission as to whose order - NHRC or WBHRC - the government should follow as the matter was being taken up by two agencies. The NHRC took cognizance of the matter in May on the basis of two separate complaints filed by two NGOs, while WBHRC took cognizance of it suo-motu on April 3, a day after the incident. In fact, WBHRC communicated the same to NHRC on April 3 itself.

WBHRC received a communication from the government on September 12 saying that since the matter was being taken up by the NHRC, the state was in no position to implement the state human right's commission recommendations at this stage. Subsequently, this communication was placed before the full bench of the commission by registrar Rabindranath Samanta. WBHRC then wrote to NHRC saying that since it took cognizance of the incident prior to NHRC, it had no locus standi to investigate the matter fresh.

Dial 'M' for Murder

Sat, 2010-12-18 11:55 — subhanil

Swapan Koley used to get up at 4am in the morning to collect his share of newspapers which he distributed to various households. This was his source of earning to continue his studies in the college. He also had a dream. A dream of changing the world where all students like him will be guaranteed the benefit of education, where man will not oppress man for higher and higher profits. It is this dream that the murderers of Trinamool Chhatra Parishad (TMCP) wanted to destroy when they brutally killed Swapan Koley on 16th December.

He was beaten with rods and swords in his college. When he took shelter on the roof of a house near his college, he was thrown down from this roof. When he was trying to reach hospital on a rickshaw with the help of his friends, he was attacked again by the TMCP goons. Swapan Koley could not take it any more and died. His only crime was that he was an activist of SFI.

Shouvik Hazra is a bright student of English Honours at Asutosh College, Kolkata. Like any other day he went to college on 16th December. On that day, the SFI along with the non-teaching and teaching staff of the college were participating in a procession protesting against the violence unleashed by TMCP. The procession was attacked by the TMCP goons and Shouvik Hazra lost his left eye when a stone hit his eye.

This scale of violence unleashed in educational institutions is being orchestrated by the TMCP under the direct instigation of Ms. Mamata Banerjee and her cohorts to terrorize the youth and students who fight for a left cause and dream about making a better society. This is however not something very surprising. Ultimately the modus operandi of the Trinamool since its inception has been a politics of provocation and violence with which they have mobilized a large section of the anti-socials under their banner. It is this politics that has killed Swapan Koley and has blinded Shouvik Hazra.

Skirmishes and stray incidents of violence has been a part of student politics all over India. It is also a common sight that the students who were fighting yesterday joke about the incident the next day over a cup of tea or coffee. What Mamata Banerjee has done through her brand of politics is to shred away the romanticism of student politics, the passionate appeal for one's ideology and politics, the liberal space of debates and discussions in college campuses. Instead with her brand of politics student politics has been hijacked by local goons and thugs, campuses are being turned into graveyards of students, politics is being turned into an arena where students will not dare to tread. In other words, Ms. Banerjee and her goons want to destroy the culture of politics within students. This is not mere speculation. The President of TMCP said that they believe that there should be no politics in campuses, in a program in the Bengali News Channel Star Ananda. This is the real agenda of the violent attacks on the student community in West Bengal. It is the compulsion of Ms Banerjee to pursue this agenda since devoid of any constructive politics she is the first person to know that thinking students can never be part of the TMCP. This agenda is being driven with full speed keeping in mind the forthcoming Assembly Elections in West Bengal.

The criminal activities of the TMCP in the college campuses is nothing but an echo of the larger murderous game plan of the Trinamool. Their leaders openly proclaim that if they win the Assembly Elections in West Bengal, they will drive out all the left supporters and will uproot the children of Lenin! It is their vision that in West Bengal they will not allow the red flag to fly with brute force. In their pronouncements we are clearly hearing the footsteps of fascistic politics.

What she and her followers have forgotten is a simple truth that dreams cannot be murdered, ideas cannot be suppressed and the left ideology cannot be physically exterminated. Swapan Koley's cold blooded murder is an assault on the idea of free speech, of the right to dream and think differently. With his murder however many more Swapan Koley will be born ready to carry forward the red flag and the ideology of Independence, Democracy and Socialism.

While the people of West Bengal were trying to grapple with the death of a student, news came from Purulia that 7 Forward Bloc workers have been brutally murdered by the Maoists. This is the first time that such a big number of killings of political activists has taken place in West Bengal. Moreover, most of the activists were tribals, whom the Maoists claim to fight for. Gopeshwar Mahato, aged 70 was not spared by the Maoists. The Maoists also did not spare Ms. Chopola Gorait, a wife of a rickshaw puller and head of a panchayat. All these people were poor and supported the Left Front in West Bengal because of which they were brutally killed by the Maoists. The so-called revolution that the Maoists want to bring in India is basically a charade. What they are doing in West Bengal today is acting as mercenaries of the Trinamool. That is why Ms. Banerjee till date has not condemned any murder that the Maoists have committed in West Bengal.

The current situation prevalent in West Bengal is one of intense attack against the CPI(M) and the Left Front, which is reminiscent of the semi-fascist terror of the 1970s. In this situation the party must ensure that all sections of the population are mobilized against the fascistic tactics of the Trinamool-Maoist combine. Already in the jungle-mahal area we have witnessed how thousands of people mobilized themselves and ensured that Maoists are sent on the back-foot. The heroic struggle of the people of jungle-mahal should inspire people across West Bengal to rise up in unison against the violence unleashed by the goons of Ms. Banerjee.

www.pragoti.org

Maoists Kill SFI Leader in West Midnapore

ON April 4, goons of the Maoist-Trinamul combine took yet another life, this time of Comrade Partha Biswas, secretary of the Harda local committee of Students’ Federation of India (SFI) in West Midnapore district of West Bengal. He was also the joint secretary of Belpahari zonal committee of the organisation.

In the evening on the day, armed Maoists surrounded Comrade Biswas, aged 25, in his village Malabati and fired two bullets in his head. A commerce graduate from Shilda College in West Midnapore, he had been active in organising the students in particular and the common people in general against the Maoist-Trinamul menace in Belpahari region. He had been vocal against the politics of killing the Maoists and the Trinamul Congress are pursuing.

Comrade Partha Biswas happens to be the fourth martyr of the SFI after the last Lok Sabha elections. Earlier, NDF fundamentalists had taken the life of Comrade A B Bijesh, a member of the Thrissur district secretariat of SFI in Kerala. In the district of West Midnapore alone in West Bengal, the Maoist-Trinamul combine had earlier killed two leading SFI comrades --- Comrade Abhijit Mahato and Comrade Tilak Tudu.

Comrade Partha Biswas was the tenth student who got killed in West Bengal after the parliamentary elections --- either by the Maoists or by the TMC.

In a statement issued on April 5, the SFI’s central executive committee strongly condemned the brutal killing of Comrade Partha Biswas and appealed to all the democratic minded people to isolate the proponents of such violence and killings. Dipping its banner of Independence, Democracy and Socialism in memory of Comrade Partha Biswas, the SFI CEC has called upon all its units to protest this heinous killing in all the campuses of the country. It has pledged to keep up the ideological political resistance to the bankrupt and reactionary politics of the self- styled Maoists who are killing the Left activists and supporters at the behest of the anti-Left alliance led by the Trinamul Congress in West Bengal. The SFI CEC has also extended heartfelt condolences to the family and friends of Comrade Partha Biswas in this hour of tragic loss.(INN)

SFI Sweeps Students’ Union Elections in Bengal

KOLKATA: OVER 2009 and 2010, the Bengal unit of the SFI has been eminently successful in leading the election results in more than 65 per cent of the undergraduate colleges and universities, including technical institutions, wherever elections have been held for the formation of the student’s unions (SU).

From Siliguri in the north to the Sunderbans-bordering urban conurbations and rural stretches, the insidious slogan raised by the ruling classes and the media they patronised about Paribartan (change) has failed to click with the majority of the students.

The latest examples of the SFI sweep across the state are the Presidency College and the Scottish Church College. Both have been won over the SFI, in the former college for the second time running, in the latter for some time now. News reaches us that the large number of colleges that went in for SU polls on February 19 in Nadia have been won by the SFI.

We single out Presidency College for our take on the nature of the SFI success in the wake of the results of the Lok Sabha elections where, too, the young people had voted, albeit perhaps in a different way. What has brought about the Paribartan since then?

The Presidency College once had the awkward reputation that the students there lately voted for either the rightists or the left sectarians. The past two years have proved shining exceptions and the margin of both votes polled by SFI candidates and the seats that the SFI have won, have gone considerably up.

The present elections at the Presidency College saw the SFI romp home with 39 seats with the combined opposition of the ‘Maoist-BJP-dominated independent consolidation relegated to the second spot with 30 seats. One seat was a tie.

The student movement in Bengal has always been a Left one. We recall how back when we were students of this august institution, the BPSF had had a running battle with the rightist and the opportunist outfits of various kinds. Much later, when the Naxalite movement arose out of a bloodbath on the college street area, the BPSF had not given an inch away politically and organisationally.

The 1950s and the 1960s were witness to the Communist movement, specially the struggle led from the vanguard post by the CPI(M), being equipped with cadres who had come up through the student movement. Biman Basu, Shyamal Chakraborty, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, Shyamali Gupta are names known principally for the leadership they provided to the BPSF and then the SFI.

The turn-around following the Lok Sabha polls started indeed with the rejection by the Bengal student community of the politics of violence, anarchy, and mayhem indulged in by the right reactionaries and their left sectarian lackeys at the Panihati College in north 24 Parganas followed by the bloodshed of SFI workers at the Harimohan Ghosh College in South 24 Pargans.
The bringing in of anti-social elements as routine chore by the Trinamuli-backed student outfits in the Kolkata colleges (Shyamaprasad College is the latest such example, in Kolkata) was yet another provocation to students who saw that the academe itself was about to be put under the shadow of the sword and the gun. The students responded with a rousing win for the SFI in a series of colleges and universities since then.

The agent provocateurs of anarchy and mayhem could mislead the young generation for a time, albeit brief, but in the final analysis it has been the politics that had dominated the thinking of the students, with the organisational integrity of the SFI at the grassroots’ level adding finally to what appears to us as a series of debacle that we are about to witness for the forces of counter-development and pro-anarchy, of the extreme right and left.