Chhoto Angaria, Jan. 9 :    Chhoto Angaria, Jan. 9:  Forensic experts, who visited this village five days after the claimed 'massacre', said Abdur Rahman Mondal's half-burnt two-storeyed house here was used to store arms. The director of the state forensic laboratory, N.K. Nag, and his team collected burst cartridges, splinters and explosive material from the first floor of the house. After Thursday night's incident, Mondal had filed an FIR at the nearest police station at Garbeta, alleging a 'massacre' of 11 Trinamul supporters by the CPM in his house that was set aflame. All the evidence was collected by the forensic team from a 40-sq-ft room on the first floor. The empty cartridges recovered were not fired from guns, but burst in a fire, which explained their low projectile velocity, Nag said. CID investigators backed up this theory. They said Naxalites had built an armoury in Mondal's house. The Left extremist People's War Group, which, too, has claimed that 10 of its supporters were massacred by the CPM that night, has become a political force strong enough to compete with the big two - CPM and Trinamul-BJP - across the region on the Midnapore-Bankura-Hooghly borders. Investigators said two people hold the key to resolving the mystery of what happened here on Thursday night: Asit Sarkar, leader of the Biplabi Krishak Front - a PWG offshoot - and Mondal. The whereabouts of Asit, a former CPM supporter expelled over corruption charges linked to the local cash-flush potato trade, are not known. Mondal remains inaccessible to the media. For the first time since he filed an FIR on Friday, Mondal was interrogated by the DIG (CID) Chayan Mukherjee, who is leading the inquiry, today. Refusing to bring Mondal out in public, Trinamul leaders at the camp said he had lost his mind. His wife, Anisha Bibi, was speaking and what she said contradicted the version given by Mondal. She said her husband had gone back to Chhoto Angaria four days before the incident. Mondal, on the contrary, had claimed that he and other Trinamul supporters had returned on the day of the incident after being assured by two CPM leaders that it was now safe to do so. Mondal is accused of having connections with a murder in nearby Chamkaitala (case No. 45/2000) and with another case at Arambag in neighbouring Hooghly. Circumstantial evidence gathered by a correspondent of The Telegraph during travels across 200 km in the region suggests that Mondal's primary loyalty is to the PWG and not to Trinamul. Asit, the driving force behind the PWG in the area, is wanted in several cases of murder, extortion and kidnapping. A Calcutta University graduate and a native of the relatively prosperous Sandhipur, Asit re-emerged as a political activist in 1990, three years after his expulsion, having used the intervening period to set up link with the PWG and form and consolidate the Krishak Front. Around 1994-95, the Trinamul-BJP combine also began to grow in the region, riding the wave of local resentment against the ruling Left. These two forces on the rise - as opposed to the CPM's declining strength - began to come into conflict, leading to the murder of BJP leader Swarup Sarkar in July 1999, allegedly at the hands of Asit's group. In retaliatory killings, Asit lost brother Anath and four other relatives. Investigators said PWG activists used a dense forest-route across Midnapore's border with Bankura to smuggle in weapons and stored these in several places, including Mondal's house, where a fire took place that night. The fire could have been caused by the explosive material stored there. Evidence of the possible presence of people during the incident was found by the forensic team, which, after biological tests, confirmed certain spots as blood stains. But in most, the patches failed the test, proving they were not blood blotches. Nag said: 'We were informed only on Monday. It would have been better if we could come earlier. Much of the evidence has been taken away from the spot.' The Bengal government has not explained why it did not send the forensic team before politicians and all manner of people freely moved about the house, collecting 'evidence'. Police, who gathered evidence earlier, have, however, said they found spent cartridges fired from muskets used in a clash between two groups, believed to be CPM and Trinamul supporters. The forensic team did not appear to have spotted any sign of a clash, but, being the last to arrive, that evidence might have escaped it. Nag did not find any evidence of the house having been attacked from outside either. He said it would not have been possible to flee from the house, jumping from the 25-foot-high first floor without suffering injury. The team did not find dragmarks on the staircase as confirmation that bodies were pulled out of the house that night. Nag highlighted missing out on much of the evidence when he said the police should have kept the place of occurrence protected. Mukherjee visited the spot today for the first time and said there was no clash involving the CPM and Trinamul or the PWG. The DIG claimed that the rumour of a clash was spread to cover up the explosion of the armoury. Mondal sought political shelter by fabricating a story that his house had been attacked, Mukherjee said. The PWG connection resurfaces in the list of Trinamul supporters killed given by Mondal in his FIR. The Naxalite group, claiming that its members were massacred that night, mentioned the same names. One of them is Shyam Patra, figuring on both lists. Patra, also a resident of Sandhipur, took over the reins of the Krishak Front once Asit disappeared from the area after being implicated in the Swarup Sarkar murder.