Nandigram, May 5: A woman ran naked half a kilometre in Nandigram after she was stripped and thrashed by alleged CPM supporters for refusing to campaign for the party, eyewitnesses said today.
So inconsolable was the 28-year-old woman that she refused a sari proffered by a police party, following which she was again beaten up in front of the law-enforcers by the political mob, the witnesses added.
The CPM denied such an incident had taken place, and the police said no one was beaten in their presence.
Wild charges do fly when elections are round the corner — the panchayat polls begin on May 11 — but the woman and several people who The Telegraph spoke to provided graphic details and a doctor said her body was covered with bruises.
According to the witnesses, around 8am on Monday, about 50 CPM supporters came to Keyakhali village, which houses many people who back the Bhoomi Uchchhed Pratirodh Committee that was at the forefront of the campaign against land acquisition in Nandigram.
The group entered the house of Debashish Jana, 35, a farm labourer, and forced him and his eight-year-old son Sanjoy to join a CPM procession. The woman — Jana’s wife —protested, following which the intruders pounced on her and ripped off her sari, blouse and petticoat. Then they rained blows on her.
“I was stripped. My only fault was protesting against the manner in which my husband and son were forced to join the procession,” said the woman, now in Nandigram block hospital. Her husband and son could not be traced after they were dragged to the procession.
While being beaten, the woman rushed out of the house naked and started running towards Brindabanchowk, around 500 metres away. The intruders then chased her in a throwback to last year’s outrage in Guwahati where an adivasi girl was stripped and assaulted. The witnesses said the pursuers kept hurling bombs to keep the villagers at bay.
As the woman approached Brindabanchowk, a police patrol halted in front of her, Shankar Das, a 30-year-old farmer, said.
“The policemen asked for a sari from a house and gave it to the woman. But she was angry and cried inconsolably, refusing to accept the sari. By this time, the CPM workers had caught up with her. In front of the policemen, she was slapped and beaten with lathis,” Shankar said.
Ashutosh Das, 38, a neighbour who had followed the woman, was assaulted.
Eventually, some women supporters of the CPM intervened. “The women came out from houses belonging to CPM supporters and asked the party workers to leave. I had by then hidden behind a bush. They took me to a house and gave me some clothes,” the woman said.
The women then told the police to take the victim to hospital. “The police took me and Ashutosh Das into the jeep. But they ordered us to get down at Tekhali bridge (about 3km away). From there we took a trekker to the hospital,” the woman added.
The doctor on duty, Susmita Pal, said: “The woman has injuries all over her body. We are treating her.” The block medical officer of Nandigram, Subhabrata Maity, added: “The bruises and swellings indicate she was beaten.”
Paritosh Das, 30, a helper in a bus; Motehar Ali, 25, a farm labourer from adjoining Jambari who was passing through Keyakhali; and Meghnad Mondal, 35, a farm labourer from Brindabanchowk, corroborated the woman’s account.
The police confirmed that a complaint of stripping had been “received”. “We have received a complaint that a woman was stripped and beaten up. We are investigating the matter,” the superintendent of police, S.S. Panda, said.
But he denied any police patrol was at Brindabanchowk when the alleged attack took place.
An East Midnapore district secretariat member of the CPM, Ashok Guria, said such an incident did not occur. “The Trinamul Congress had earlier brought charges of rape against CPM workers but nothing has been proved. Now they have started a new trick. The woman might have had a fall.”
CPM state secretariat member Benoy Konar, too, denied party activists’ involvement.
