Bhattacharjee: Plea on deaf ears

Tamluk, Aug. 10: Bullets flew in Nandigram today, injuring a 50-year-old woman a day after chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee ruled out re-deploying the CRPF in the area.

East Midnapore superintendent of police S.S. Panda said: “There was sporadic violence and the police was sent to defuse the tension.”

CPM and Bhoomi Uchchhed Pratirodh Committee supporters had begun trading fire in three villages around 5am, the police said.

Hasina Bibi, 50, a Pratirodh Committee supporter, was cleaning her courtyard when the firing intensified in her village, Osmanchak, around 8am. Hasina tried to run inside when “a bullet grazed her eye causing her burn injuries”, a police officer said.

A doctor at Nandigram block hospital said Hasina’s injury was minor and she need not be shifted to a bigger hospital.

The firing stopped after the police arrived from Nandigram around 10am.

A police officer said a camp would be set up at Jadubarichar, one of the three villages that saw trouble today. The other two are Garchakraberia and Osmanchak.

The officer in charge of Nandigram police station, Debashish Chakraborty, arrived around noon and spoke to leaders of the Pratirodh Committee and the CPM.

“It was decided that an all-party peace meeting would be held at the office of Kalicharanpur gram panchayat under which the villages fall,” Chakraborty said.

Pratirodh Committee leaders alleged that the CPM supporters started the firing and accused the police of inaction.

“The police arrived five hours after we informed them. One of our supporters was injured. She had a close shave and could have been killed,” said Shoem Kazi, a Pratirodh Committee convener.

Kazi said Bhattacharjee’s all-party meeting yesterday was an eyewash.

“It is his party that was firing and hurling bombs and the police were just bystanders. Peace will not return to Nandigram unless this situation changes,” he said.

“The CPM is again trying to recapture Nandigram. That is why it is bringing in the Red Brigade (the party’s private army) from Khejuri and Haldia.”

Local CPM leaders cited Mamata Banerjee’s absence at peace talks to argue that the Trinamul Congress, which is backing the Pratirodh Committee, was “not interested in restoring peace in Nandigram”.

They (Trinamul workers) are the ones fomenting trouble. They also beat up two CPM workers in Jadubarichar. It is the Pratirodh Committee people who started firing this morning to intimidate our workers,” said Ashok Guria, CPM district secretariat member.

Two CPM workers fell to bullets in Nandigram last week, after which Bhattacharjee called the all-party meeting.

Niranjan Mondal, a local committee secretary from Rajaramchowk, was shot dead last Wednesday in Kendamari while Dulal Garudas, a CPM branch committee member, was killed the next day after he was caught in crossfire.