Naxalites Had Targeted The CPI(M) At Bandwan

B Prasant

THE principal aim of the Naxalite MCC-PWG combine on October 11 at Bandwan in Purulia district of Bengal was to assassinate two zonal committee members of the CPI(M).  They aimed at organising an attack on the police to terrorise the local populace into providing them with shelter and food. The district leadership of the CPI(M) in Purulia have no doubt that the PWG-MCC had wanted to kill to Mahendra Mahato and Khagen Mahato, members of the Bandwan zonal committee of the CPI(M).

Local level enquiries revealed that back on October 4, a group of heavily-armed PWG-MCC assassins had entered the area and had scouted for suitable positions in the forest to launch an attack on the zonal committee members of the CPI(M) who were active in organising the local populace against extremist incursions.

It was also revealed that on October 11, after having mined the approach road through the Kantagara forest, the extremists had raided the houses of Mahendra and Khagen, and had left when they found that both had gone out of town.  The intruders had camouflaged uniforms on and had their faces shrouded in black cloth.  They had threatened that they would “come back and finish” the two CPI(M) leaders.

A six-hour bandh in Bandwan called on October 14 in protest against the MCC-PWG attack has passed off peacefully. The district CPI(M) leadership has declared that meetings and marches would be organised throughout the area in the days and weeks to come to register the anger of the rural masses against the extremist incursions.

Elsewhere, in Kolkata, Left Front chairman Biman Basu said that the Bandwan incident was a direct attack on democracy and was conducted by people who believed in the wrong kind of politics.