Twenty-five days after unrest singed Betbona village of Murshidabad’s Samserganj block, a large police camp — almost the size of a police station — was set up and launched officially on Wednesday.
It came a day after chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s visit, in keeping with the takeaways of her meeting with around 400 families from Betbona and other violence-hit areas of the district at the local block development office on Tuesday.
The camp comprises two sub-inspectors, four assistant sub-inspectors, and 21 armed police personnel.
Of them, sub-inspector Mithun Haldar has been given charge of the camp.
On April 12, communal strife broke out in the Samserganj police station area, causing extensive damage to Betbona, and causing the loss of two lives in neighbouring Jafrabad.
Although nobody was killed in Betbona, hundreds of homes were vandalised and set on fire.
Fearing for their lives, more than 100 families from the village crossed the Ganga on boats and took shelter in a school in Malda’s Baishnabnagar. Following the administration’s requests, when the situation somewhat normalised, they returned to the village.
On Tuesday, when Mamata met a few of them and heard them out, she also assured multiple forms of assistance from her government, in addition to cheques for ₹1.20 lakh for each of 236 families.
Betbona woman Kalpana Mandal told Mamata during the meeting that the people there had no faith in the state police and wanted a permanent BSF camp in the village — a demand wholeheartedly endorsed by the BJP — to which the chief minister had not directly responded then.
But the following day, the state police camp came up in a rented, unoccupied house in the village, which Jangipur police district chief Amit Kumar Shaw confirmed.
“A permanent police camp will be in Betbona. Later, we will have a permanent police camp and our building. Currently, 27 police personnel and officers are staying in the (temporary building of the) camp. The police camp was necessary to maintain peace and order in the area, and was the also demand of the people of the area,” said Shaw.
Betbona is a small village, with barely 1,300 people in 250-odd families.
The TMC’s rival political parties had differing views on the setting up of such a large police camp in the small village.
While the CPM and the BJP expressed displeasure, the Congress welcomed the move.
CPM district secretary Jamir Mollah said: “Now, what purpose does this (police camp at Betbona) serve? When it was necessary, not a single policeman was available for six-seven hours. If even five police personnel had gone at the time (the violence erupted last month), the tension could have been defused. Murshidabad was defamed. Three people died. But now, 27 cops are being deployed permanently.”
“We all understand why this is happening, the people of the district understand too,” Mollah said.
The BJP’s Jangipur unit chief Subal Chandra Ghosh alleged that nobody in Murshidabad or anywhere else in Bengal had any trust left in the state police.
“The BJP and the villagers have been demanding a BSF camp since the beginning,” Ghosh said. “Instead, a state police camp has been set up. The people of Betbona village have no trust in them, we don’t either.”
The Congress’s local MP, Maldah Dakshin’s Isha Khan Choudhury said he had visited Betbona and witnessed firsthand the level of panic among the people, and he therefore welcomed the move.
“At a time like this, the police camp is very important. As the local MP, I had petitioned before the chief minister for a paramilitary or a strong state police camp. That this has been set up is good, the people will benefit by way of enhanced security,” said Khan Choudhury.
Trinamool’s Samserganj MLA Amirul Islam said that the chief minister wasted no time in fulfilling the demand of the people — suggesting the people of Betbona had asked for a state police camp, not a BSF camp.
“The people are happy. They distributed sweets when the police camp was opened,” he said. “The situation has normalised here and the people are well. That’s what our state government wants.”
