Eight people were burnt to death following the killing of Bhadu Sheik, a local TMC leader, when some miscreants threw crude bombs while he was sitting in a teashop in village Bagtui of Rampurhat Block in Birbhum District. The village is divided and represents two politically polarized sections of the inhabitants. Most men allegedly fled the village fearing reprisals. A mob soon gathered and allegedly rounded up women and children, locking them from the outside to prevent any escape. The mob doused the huts with flammable liquids and burnt the huts.
Eight adult women, a girl of 10 and a lone man who was an outsider and oblivious of the lurking danger, were all charred to death. The news could not be kept a secret as it spread like wildfire. A top leader from the district immediately rubbished the incidence from a TV burst from a short circuit. A few others promptly touted a conspiracy theory by the political opponents in West Bengal. The social networks brought to the public’s notice the gory massacre, as the Bengali media dug its head in the mud and the government tried to absolve itself in vain.
The place of incidence is barely ten kilometres from the police station or an outpost. All knew about the two warring political factions in the village that kept the situation explosive. The scapegoats, as usual, were the police. The inspector of Rampurhat P.S., The SDPO and the Dist. Superintendent of Police were sent away, as the State realized the cold horror, unheard of, similar to Nandigram killings.
The opposition leaders were the first to spot an opportunity to showcase the deterioration of the law-and-order situation in the State. The fallen standards of the media were apparent when the TV primetime news was busy describing the menu of the breakfast of the opposition leaders at Shaktigarh. The WB CM ridiculed the opposition legislators who went on a bus to Rampurhat to condemn the killings by saying that they went eating sweets, lyangcha. The mock was not appropriate and fitting for the grievous occasion.
The emotion in the State is a bundle of anger, frustration, and anxiety. Are we going to live with this situation for the next four years? Much like Gopal Gandhi’s famous expression of ‘cold horror’ after the cold-blooded Nandigram killings, Governor Dhankar, too, raised a similar concern at the situation. The State constituted a Special Investigation Team, the CM heading the panel. Calcutta High Court today handed the investigation over to the CBI, much to the chagrin of the State government.
I was in Rampurhat two weeks ago. The simmer is discernible. Not foreseeing the plan to eliminate their local leader or the retaliatory violence killing women and a child are failures of the police force headed by none other than the CM herself. She must mend it immediately.
I am not a member of the BJP party and do not need to be one to reflect the sentiment of most of the citizens of Bengal. I condemn not only the massacre but also the usual attempts to brush them under the carpet, by scapegoating the police or with allurement with cheques and jobs to the kin of those killed. Sadly, many leaders, including a few literate ones, praised the CM for the cheques and job offers from “Chief-minister’s Quota!
Try roasting a hapless live chicken to realize its pain and its last moments!
Sampath Kumar
Intrépide Voix
