CRPF constable Dimple Sharma shows a wound that she received when she was assaulted by Nandigram police station officer-in-charge Debashish Chakraborty. The OC, too, alleged that he was attacked by a CRPF jawan. Picture by Pradip Sanyal

Nandigram, May 11: The morning had been quiet in No. 7 Jalpai village, adjoining trouble-torn Garchakraberia.

Despite fears that CPM supporters would terrorise voters, CRPF presence across Nandigram I had a calming effect and voters had queued up at booth No. 83, on the Baruni Asnan Prathmik Vidyalaya premises, since early morning.

Polling may not have been brisk, but it was peaceful.

But that suddenly changed at 12.20pm when about 50 CPM cadres armed with revolvers and bombs landed up at the polling station.

First the bombs were hurled to scatter the voters — about a hundred of them were standing patiently in the queue — and then the bullets were fired in the air to scare the rest.

“Run away or you’re dead,” Tariq Ali (name changed) quoted the cadres as saying. “They said ‘how dare you come to vote’,” the 40-year-old man said.

There were only two state policemen posted at the booth. Tariq and some other voters said they doubted if the police would have reacted even if they had been present in larger numbers.

“While shouting at us to go away, the cadres kept hurling bombs,” Tariq said. “I heard five blasts and several gunshots before I ran away.”

Once the booth was free of the voters, the CPM cadres went to work.

They entered the room where the votes were being cast, locked the door and turned to presiding officer Dilip Kumar Patra.

“I could hear the sound of bombs being burst and then I saw these people (CPM cadres) entering the room,” Patra said. “They were carrying revolvers and one of them came up to me. Pointing a revolver on my head, he asked me to hand over the ballot papers. I had no choice.”

By that time, 258 of the booth’s 884 voters had cast their votes.

The cadres spent the next 30 minutes casting votes as the presiding officer and the two policemen looked on.

“What else could we do?” Patra said. “There was no way we could protest. They kept casting false votes.”

But in the 30 minutes the CPM activists spent inside the booth, word had got around of what was happening.

Villagers, who were helpless so far, suddenly spotted a group of CRPF personnel on patrol nearby and rushed to them.

Told about what was happening, the CRPF team made its way to the polling station.

The CPM cadres, who had been tipped off about the CRPF’s moves, tried to rush out of the booth. The paramilitary personnel gave them a chase and caught one of them.

Sheikh Khushnavi, who had been too busy casting false votes, was late in making the getaway. He has been handed over to the police.

Since entering the polling station was beyond the jurisdiction of the CRPF team — their duty was restricted to “area domination” outside of the booths — the executive magistrate accompanying it went in to see what was going on.

But instead of reporting facts to the CRPF, magistrate Tapan Pramanik misled the force saying peaceful polling was in progress.

However, The Telegraph reporter on the spot pointed out to CRPF commandant S.P. Singh that not all was well inside. When Singh asked Pramanik about it, the magistrate said he would seek a report from the presiding officer.

However, the matter was referred to election observer Sujit Dasgupta, who cancelled the polling in booth No. 83 of No. 7 Jalpai village.