Jhargram/ Calcutta, Aug. 11: A farmer who had accused Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee of making false promises to the poor in Jungle Mahal during her rally on Wednesday was picked up a second time on Friday night and slapped with non-bailable charges.
Shiladitya Chowdhury, who makes a living from a one-bigha plot of land in a Binpur village, was accused of assaulting and causing hurt to government officials 48 hours after the police let go of him because they had found nothing against him.
After his detention from the rally ground at Belpahari, the police had tried to pass off Shiladitya as wanted Maoist Duryodhan Mahato. But they set him free after realising he was not faking his identity, he was an ordinary villager.
At Maoist-affected Belpahari, where a chief minister was travelling after several decades, the first reaction was to brand the dissenter a Maoist.
“Did you see how I caught one of them red-handed?” Mamata told the crowd after police whisked Shiladitya away.
During her speech, Mamata accused Maoists of sneaking into the rally ground to create trouble.
“Why are we not getting proper prices for paddy? Why are the prices of fertilisers increasing every day? You know well your promises are not coming into reality… why are you giving false promises to poor people like us?” the man seated towards the front rows of the audience stood up and asked, pointing a finger at the chief minister.
“Ke apni? Ki korte eshechen ekhane? Oke dhorun to… ekhhuni dhorun (Who are you? Why you have come here? Catch him immediately),” Mamata ordered the police.
A group of 20 policemen, all with AK-47 rifles slung across their shoulders, caught the man and took him away to the Belpahari police station. Mamata continued her speech, how her development programmes for the region were bearing fruit.
The police initially tried to portray the detained man as Duryodhan Mahato, a Maoist active in Binpur, the same area about 20km from Belpahari, where Shiladitya lives. But after questioning him for over six hours, the officers let him walk free.
But according to police sources, their Jhargram officers were subjected to a series of queries from Writers’ Buildings after the release and “it virtually amounted to an order to put him behind the bars so that no one dared to repeat such an offence”.
“On Thursday, we received an instruction from our superiors to arrest him immediately. We were told that if the man was not arrested, his act might encourage others to challenge the chief minister during her forthcoming rallies in Jungle Mahal before the panchayat polls,” said an officer of the Belpahari police station.
The superintendent of the Jhargram police district, Bharati Ghosh, today denied that Shiladitya was released. “During the course of interrogation, he managed to flee,” she said.
But anyone who has been anywhere near the Belpahari police station knows the building ringed by sand bunkers and crammed by police from the rooftop to the grille gate is well nigh impossible to breach the fortress.
Had Shildaitya fled, it was also unlikely that he would be sitting at home, as he was when the police came knocking last night.
