Criminals under BJP protection burnt down a dalit basti in Kajhiya in Akbarpur block of Nawada district. Even after such a big incident local BJP MLA Anil Singh did not visit the spot.
A CPI(ML) team comprising CC member and former MP Rameshwar Prasad, Legislative Party leader Mahboob Alam, and Tarari MLA Sudama Prasad found that the police picketing by the administration has served not to protect the dalits from attack but to prevent them from rebuilding their basti there.
The FIR has been deliberately weakened and the police investigation states that the fire was ‘accidental’, which claim our investigative team has found to be blatantly false. A rumour is being floated that the poor people there deliberately torched their own huts!
The CPI(ML) team found that poor Dalits were living in huts made on 1 acre and 62 dismil of Bihar government gair mazarua land. The site has a total of 9 acres of government land. This land is quite valuable as it is bounded by roads on 3 sides. For this reason feudal dominant caste forces have had their eye on this land for some time.
In the past also, huts of the poor had been burnt with a view to terrorizing them and driving them out. Work is under way to set up a private college at that site. The constructors of the college also have their eye on this gair mazarua land.
The administration has placed the number of burnt huts at only 35, whereas the actual number is 60. People are living under the open sky; not even temporary living arrangements have been made for them. Neither food nor plastic for shelters has been made available to them.
The villagers had written several times to the zonal authorities for issue of parchas but in spite of the Government’s much touted ‘dakhal-dehani’ scheme (that promised to give papers and secure possession of land for the landless), attempts to evict the poor from their land are in full swing.
Nitish Kumar and RJD leaders lose no changes to make speeches against the BJP – but they do not walk the talk when it comes to protecting the poor from the feudal and communal forces on the ground.
