People's Democracy

IN an instance of extreme brutality, Maoist killers put to the torch and burnt alive CPI(M) leader Comrade Rabindranath Kar (67) and his wife Anandamayee (55) at Bhomragorah village at Bandowan in Purulia. Comrade Rabindranath was a member of the district secretariat of the CPI(M) and a long-time Party organiser in Purulia’s Bandowan and surrounding areas.

State secretary of the Bengal unit of the CPI(M), Anil Biswas has condemned the incident and has said that the Maoists are but tools in the hands of the forces of right reaction like the Pradesh Congress and the Trinamul Congress, and of chauvinist Jharkhandis. Bengal Left Front chairman, and senior CPI(M) leader Biman Basu strongly condemned the killings.

The gruesome incident took place deep into the night of December 30-31. Around two in the morning, more than 50 Maoist extremists had the police outpost surrounded and it has been alleged that they prevented the police from moving out by threatening to explode mines.

The Maoists then made their way to the hutment where Comrade Rabindranath would put up with his family members. Breaking down the main entrance easily enough, the killers stormed into the house and called for Comrade Rabindranath and Anandamayee.

The couple came fearlessly out of the attic room where they had retired after a day of Party work, and confronted the assassins who were, each one of the thirty-odd present, were armed with either self-loading rifles or with carbines. Anandamayee even managed to push a couple of the killers down the staircase.

Faced with automatic gunfire, the couple retired to the attic and bolted the door. The family members kept immobilised under the barrels of guns by the criminals saw with horror as the extremists pumped a hail of bullets into the doorway.

Several cans of kerosene were procured. A motorcycle standing in the courtyard was emptied of fuel. The lethal combination was then poured out around the house and especially around the attic. Then set fire. The Kar couple was burnt alive.

Chandana Modak the married daughter of the Kars tearfully told how there had been death threats against Comrade Rabindranath from the Maoists and how the CPI(M) leader, brushing aside suggestions that he move to a different location, had quietly but firmly asserted that as a son of the soil, nobody and nothing would make him abandon the area that had nurtured him from childhood, and the people whom he had the privilege to serve.

The Maoists who came dressed in police uniforms and Army fatigues, and carried regulation weapons to match, included a woman. The group had probably come, and gone back to, the abutting villages of Thakurdaha and Meghradaha of the neighbouring east Singhbhum district of Jharkhand.

A statewide protest demonstration programme was held throughout the state to register the anger and anguish of the people at the dastardly killing. The programme was organised under the aegis of the Bengal Left Front.

The Maoists and Jharkhandis have until date killed no less than 31 CPI(M) workers in the western ‘red clay’ districts of Bengal. There have been instances when the Maoists have also put to death the young and the women of the CPI(M) workers household. The instances of the killing of the four-year-old Priyanka, and of the octogenarian Puntibala, the young daughter and the mother-in-law respectively of CPI(M) worker Sristidhar Mahato of Salboni, and the cutting down in a hail of bullets of his wife, Ichhamati.

Later speaking to the Kolkata media at the Muzaffar Ahmad Bhavan, Anil Biswas noted how the opposition parties, groups, and their patrons maintained a smug silence over the killing spree of the Maoists. Trinamul Congress chief Mamata Banerjee in perversion of logic has indeed blamed the CPI(M) for having precipitated the killings. The opposition in Bengal were engaged in indirectly abetting the killers, said Anil Biswas.

Anil Biswas said that the killings were political in nature and had little to do with development or lack thereof. He cited the various developmental work that ‘have continually taken place in the zones and areas where the Maoists have carried out their dastardly activities of mayhem and murder.’

Coming down heavily on individual killing, Anil Biswas said that in Bengal such forms of activities had always been a failure. Biswas recalled how during the fateful years between 1967 and 1969, three CPI(M) workers were killed on an average per day. The 1971 elections that followed saw the CPI(M) emerge with 113 seats as the single largest political party in the Bengal state legislative assembly.

Answering a question from the media persons, Anil Biswas said that during the time the Left Front had been in office from 1977, no less than 3300 CPI(M) workers had been killed, and among those killed were 25 district committee members of the Party. He dubbed the Maoists as the enemies of democracy, enemies of development, and enemies of the people.