Tahemina Bibi, whose house was looted in Khanakul. Ananda Das

Khanakul, Nov. 2: Some 500 alleged CPM workers armed with guns today terrorised two Hooghly villages that had switched loyalties, raising the spectre of another Nandigram and suggesting that the party had drawn no lessons from successive election defeats.

The attackers also fired at police, injuring a constable. An officer at Khanakul police station said the police retaliated and 20 rounds were fired before the raiders retreated.

At least one woman said the attackers entered her home, tore her sari and molested her. A 70-year-old farmer’s house was looted by the attackers who termed it “a lesson for supporting Trinamul”, his son said.

The assault in Kantapukur and Ishanpara — a day after Jyoti Basu’s appeal to Congress supporters to vote CPM if they wanted “peace” — brought back memories of the CPM’s November 2007 “recapture” of Nandigram when gunmen on motorcycles rode into the East Midnapore trouble zone.

This morning’s attack, the second in Khanakul within a month, also suggested that party cadres wouldn’t hesitate to unleash violence to regain turf lost in elections.

Mamata Banerjee has warned she would be forced to call a bandh if the violence continued. ( )

Both Kantapukur and Ishanpara are dominated by Muslims who switched allegiance from the CPM to Trinamul after the May Lok Sabha elections. It prompted the CPM to last month shift the office of the party-run gram panchayat near Kantapukur to Patul, a village 3km away that is still a Marxist stronghold and from where the attackers set out today.

“We had information that Trinamul activists had been trying to heckle the woman pradhan, Rupali Ghosh. So we felt it would be safer to have the office in Patul,” a CPM leader said.

Additional district magistrate Shrishtidhar Santra said the move was illegal as no such order had been issued.

At Writers’ Buildings, home secretary Ardhendu Sen said “sufficient forces” had been deployed in Khanakul.

Asked if Khanakul was becoming a “second Nandigram”, Sen said: “If necessary, we will send more forces to Khanakul. But I don’t think it’s turning into another Nandigram.”

The CPM zonal committee secretary in Khanakul, Bhajahari Bhuniyan, said no party activist was involved.