Suri, May 12: When the residents of a Birbhum village threatened to boycott the Assembly polls about a month ago because they had to walk a kilometre for water, pipes and digging equipment arrived almost immediately.

After they voted and the poll results were announced, men were sent with equal alacrity to bring back the machines.

Block development officer Madhusudan Roy said some of the Ramnagar residents had told him that they did not want the tube-well at the selected site. But he could neither say who these villagers were nor show any document to prove his contention.

“Cheated”, the villagers refused to let go of the equipment that employees of the block development office and the public health engineering department had come to cart away.

There are four tube-wells in Ramnagar, 225 km from Calcutta, which are long defunct. Its only sources of water now are small irrigation pumps and a pond, a kilometre away.

When repeated appeals to the panchayat and the block administration fell on deaf ears, the villagers ? 600 voters among them ? decided to boycott the polls. They even submitted a memorandum to the BDO.

CPM leaders campaigning for the Forward Bloc candidate from Dubrajpur requested the residents to call off their boycott.

“The leaders assured us that we’ll get new tube-wells and the BDO even came to identify a site. Convinced that we would be getting our tube-wells we called off our boycott,” said Champa Sikdar, 30, who had marched to the BDO’s office.

On April 22, block development and public health engineering employees arrived with pipes and other equipment to sink the tube-well and kept them beside a club. The villagers, thinking that the administration was working according to promise, guarded them so that they were not stolen.

“We thought our prayers had been answered,” said Mithu Mondal, 32, another housewife.

She was in for a shock around 10 am today as a group of men started packing the pipes and equipment.

The villagers had had enough. About 200 of them blocked the way. “We will not let you take these back,” said Gopal Sikdar, 47, a farm labourer. Hiru Sikdar and others joined in.

After being gheraoed for a few hours, the employees returned empty-handed, but the BDO said Ramnagar won’t get a tube-well.