(A posse of policemen fired upon the unarmed demonstrators of Forward Bloc (an LF partner in the WB Government) at Dinhata in the district of Coochbehar, West Bengal on 5 February 2008, killing 5 FB supporters and leaving several wounded. FB observed a statewide bandh on the next day with active support of CPI(M)L. A CPI(ML) fact-finding team comprising 7 members including WB State Secretary and PB member Kartick Pal, Central Committee member Abhijit Mazumdar, Jalpaiguri District Secretary Subrata Chakraborty, Coochbehar Secretary Babun Dey & three others from the Alipurduar Area Committee visited Dinhata on 7 February. They met district leaders of FB, the next of kin of the killed activists and talked to dozen other eyewitnesses of the event. Abhijit Majumdar report’s.)
February 5 2008. As a part of a pre-scheduled state-wide agitation, 10, 000 unarmed rural protesters, under the leadership of the FB district committee, held a procession from the FB’s Dinhata sub-divisional office at around 12.45 p.m. They were agitating for their long-standing 7- point demands regarding guarantee of 100 days work under NREGA, inclusion of deserving names in BPL list, revamping of North Bengal Development Council etc. The fact that these demands were perennially ignored led them to break the initial police barricades to enter into the office premises of the Sub-Divisional officer. As soon as they entered and started agitating before the S.D.O. they were indiscriminately lathicharged and shelled with tear gas for a few minutes only. When they were running helter-skelter CRPF personnel (kept on alert beforehand behind the office) along with the State police force, without the least provocation, began body-line firing from behind the dispersing crowd. Five activists namely Swapan Mohanto (party wholetimer , aged 50 years) , Niren Haldar (small fisherman, aged 45 years), Pradip Burman (temporary worker at Dinhata Municipality, aged 25 years) , Indrajit Chakraborty (Part-time teacher of Sitai High School, aged 23 years) and Nirod Roy (para-teacher, aged 32 years ) fell to the INSAS bullets and died on the spot. 18 others sustained bullet injuries, mostly above the waistline. They were later transferred to Dinhata hospital, Coochbehar district hospital and 4 mortally wounded to North Bengal Medical College & Hospital. Among them the condition of Tarani Burman and Anil Kundu still remains critical.
In the last 30 years regime of Left-Front in West Bengal, such brutal police repression on one of the major constituents of the Front is unprecedented. Despite a formal declaration from the first Left-Front Chief Minister Jyoti Basu in 1977, advocating restraint in police intervention in democratic movements, the WB police force resorted to such mass massacres right from Marichjhampi in 1978 through Falakata, Chandmoni, Nandigram down to Dinhata at the behest of the strongest partner CPI(M). More than 700 people have been killed by police firing in WB in the last 30 years. But in the case of Dinhata, circumstantial evidences stand proof to a meticulously planned out methodology of intimidation on behalf of the CPI(M) leadership.
Coochbehar district, Dinhata in particular, is popularly held to be a stronghold of FB since the days of their recently demised firebrand leader Kamal Guha. In the last one and half years, FB fell out with CPI(M) over the corporate land grab at Singur and the Nandigram massacre, leading to sporadic conflicts at several districts of West Bengal. Their sustained campaign against infiltration of big capital in retail business has also widened the cleavage further. The local CPI(M) leadership seemed to be all nerves and planned out such retaliation in collusion with the civil administration to teach FB a lesson prior to the forthcoming panchayat polls. Investigation reveals that on 4 February the CPI(M) district leadership arranged a public meeting at Sanhati maidan at Dinhata to felicitate the DYFI-SFI participants of the much-hyped ‘Long-March’ from Malda to Tufanganj. CPI(M) heavyweight leaders like Minister of Forestry Ananta Roy and the infamous District Secretary Chandi Pal, while addressing the crowd, were vituperative against the FB and urged their party cadres to wage war against their local adversary in all possible ways. The organizational-political report of the recent CPI(M) Dinhata Local Committee Conference also evinces such documented diatribe against their primary political opposition here – the FB.
CRPF was deployed in a surreptitious manner prior to the entry of the protesters inside the SDO office. Eyewitnesses like a local roadside tea-vendor, and a cobbler, testified that the CRPF personnel, under the stewardship of a female commandant, went off with gunshots from both behind the office block and the rooftop. While the Inspector General of Police, North Bengal Range dithered on the number of rounds fired and could only stretch it to 25 from the initial claim of 5 rounds only, both the killed and wounded activists bore more than one bullet wounds. Even the bullet spots on the surrounding walls of the office stand testimony to more than 80 rounds fired upon the villagers. Notorious for his brazen and vulgar defence of police and cadre atrocities at Singur and Nandigram, CPI(M) stalwart Benoy Konar spoke up the very next day, saying that the police did the right thing at Dinhata! CPI(M) District Secretary Chandi Pal claimed that the FB leaders had involved notorious miscreants who went on a rampage at the office, and hence justified the police action. Later he went to the extent of advising the FB leadership to steer away from the district Left-Front ensemble. On top of that, in collusion with the CPI(M) leadership the SDO himself could successfully frame charges in an FIR (prepared within a couple of hours of the firing ) against 57 persons including 7 District Committee leaders of FB, 40 already arrested activists and 10 more wounded political workers under IPC Section 307 etc. Branding the FB activists as anti-socials furthers CPI(M)’s agenda of political vengeance. Surprisingly the SDO Mr. Debabrata Chakraborty confided to the APDR fact-finding team that he himself was not responsible for the firing incident. He reportedly refused outright to pass an order to that effect (‘Maximum Effect’ in police parlance!) and threatened his superiors to come out with embarrassing details, if further pressed.
The FB state leadership called for a state-wide Bandh on 6 February with active support from CPI(ML) Liberation. This bandh got widespread popular support from the masses. Later the three non-CPI(M) Left Front partners sat together and placed three-point demand charter to the trigger-happy Chief Minister. The CM instantly agreed to institute a one-member Judicial Enquiry Commission, but understandably refrained either from revoking all charges against FB leadership-activists or punishing the police officers responsible for the indiscriminate firing. How long the FB leadership would be successful in containing the furious village level activists from breaking away with the CPI(M) remains an open question. But the bereaved, aggrieved party workers at the base level are seen to be already active in ousting the CPI(M) at least in Dinhata and surrounding areas in the forthcoming panchayat polls.
After visiting Dinhata on 7 February, the leader of the fact-finding team Comrade Kartick Pal addressed two consecutive press conferences both at Siliguri and Coochbehar. Describing the Dinhata Police Firing as ‘An orchestrated act of political vengeance ad massacre’ he demanded immediate resignation of the CM of Bengal. He also raised the demand of unconditional lifting of all charges against the protesters. While calling for additional financial allocation for the ailing peasantry of North Bengal in the coming state budget, he urged upon the FB leadership to end their bonhomie with the CPI(M) and forge a united resistance against state and cadre repression of the CPI(M) brand. The present Left Front government has lost its political relevance and legitimacy, and the situation urgently demands a radical re-alignment of the Left Front in West Bengal, he said.
On 13 February, CPI(ML) Liberation observed a state-wide protest day against the Dinhata Police Firing. On the same day a massive protest meeting was organized by the Coochbehar district committee at Dinhata Chowpathy and the mass meeting was addressed by Comrades Abhijit Mazumdar, Subrata Chakraborty, Jogen Singha Roy, Babun Dey, Chanchal Das and others.
