On 9 December, Left parties took out a joint protest march against the Bhagalpur police brutality on landless poor and dalits, including women. The march started from Ghantaghar Chowk and culminated in a meeting at Station Chowk. As activists began gathering for the march, the police in large numbers surrounded the venue and started scolding passers-by, rickshaw drivers etc. and tried to create an atmosphere of fear. When the march started, police vehicles also fronted and tailed the march and they tried to keep the common people away from the protesters. However, the spirited slogans of the protesters silenced the police.
Speakers at the meeting said that innocent landless poor and dalits peacefully protesting for possession of their land were brutally beaten and lathi charged, and women were stripped half-naked and beaten, by the administrative officials at the behest of the State government and dominant sections of society. This incident has exposed the anti-poor and anti-dalit face of the Nitish government. This government, drunk on the arrogance of having brought in ‘prohibition’, has given the landless poor nothing but false and empty promises. The Left speakers pledged that they would fight every such attack by the administration and would continue the struggle for land and other basic issues of the poor.
The Left parties demanded the arrest of concerned officials, unconditional release of struggling people against whom false charges have been registered, compensation to the injured, possession of the land to the landless poor and immediate implementation of Bandopadhyay commission recommendations on land reforms.
