The nightmare ends with the meeting of Debashish Jana with his son, Sanjoy. Telegraph file picture

Nandigram, May 7: Debashish Jana hid under a heap of cow-dung cakes less than 100m from the place where his wife, allegedly stripped of clothes, was being brutalised by a mob.

Around the same time, their son Sanjoy (8) had broken free of a procession he was forced to join, according to information pieced together by the 35-year-old father and the child a day after alleged CPM supporters stormed their house and asked them to be part of their panchayat poll campaign.

The child was then chased and caught by alleged CPM supporters who hit him with sticks till he fell unconscious. After they left, villagers who recognised the boy took him to his aunt’s house, Debashish said. Jana said he escaped similar retribution by taking refuge beneath a foul-smelling cow-dung cake mound near the cowshed of a house.

“I was running for my life and I saw the heap of cow-dung cakes and I hid under it. I could hear shouts from the CPM supporters looking for me. I stayed there till around 8pm when the owner of the house, Nishi Mondal, found me. He took me inside and gave me food and water,” Debashish said at the Nandigram subdivisional hospital, where he came early this morning to see his wife.

It was from Nishi that Debashish heard his wife had been stripped and she ran naked half a kilometre from her house in Keyakhali.

“I was angry. I was a CPM supporter for 10 years until I became a Bhoomi Uchchhed Pratirodh Committee supporter last year and participated in their rallies,” said Debashish.

Worried about his wife and son, Debashish said, he slipped out of Nishi’s house around 1am. “It took me about three hours to walk in the darkness to the hospital, 8km away,” said Debashish.

This morning, Sanjoy was brought for a check-up to the same hospital by aunt Jyotsna Das and her husband Gopal.

“Yesterday morning, I and my father were led away by the CPM men. I was feeling very scared and I started running. They chased me and hit me on my hands with lathis. The pain was so unbearable that I lost consciousness,” Sanjoy said.

After a tearful reunion at the hospital, Debashish’s wife said: “The way they dragged my husband and son out of the house, I thought they would be murdered. When I saw my husband this morning I was overjoyed and felt I will be able to face the world again.”

But the doctor attending on her, Susmita Pal, said she would take some time to recover from the shock.

Debashish later went to Nandigram police station to lodge a complaint. “But the duty officer told me it won’t be taken as the OC was not there. I went to the block development officer.”

The complaint was eventually lodged with BDO Shantiram Gorai, who went to the hospital and recorded the woman’s statement. Debashish later lodged a complaint with the police, too.

The government has ordered a “high-level” probe. Special inspector-general, CID, Sanjoy Mukherjee, will visit Nandigram for the inquiry.

CPM state secretary Biman Bose chose to keep mum.

The party had yesterday denied involvement of its activists in the assault.