The 300 CRPF men and 100 district riot police began their march from Pirakata at 4pm yesterday. The troops had advanced 8km to Bhimpur — almost halfway to Lalgarh — by 6.30 pm. When dusk fell the forces decided to push back 2km and halt for the night by the roadside at Koima. Police forces had to face two more human walls. Tear gas and lathis took care of the resistance. A small crowd blocked the road in Bhimpur and was driven away easily. Policemen entered homes, searching for suspects and beating up anyone who came their way.
“You have two minutes to disperse. Else, you’ll face action,” additional superintendent of police (Jhargram), Subhankar Sarkar, bellowed into a microphone, peering at the “human shield” of 2,000 villagers a little ahead of Malida village, media reported.
Five women fell into the paddy fields after being beaten by the police. “There were no policewomen. We were beaten up by the policemen. Many fell unconscious”, said Lakshmi Soren, 40. There are, however, no reports of serious injuries, officials said.
The force had to remove several tree trunks by the time it faced the human shield at Malida. When the two minutes were up, the police fired a few shots in the air and lobbed over 50 tear-gas shells. As the smoke began to sting their eyes, the villagers began breaking up.
The decision to launch the operation Lalgarh came at a meeting on Wednesday between home secretaries Ardhendu Sen, state police chief Sujit Sarkar and district officials at the West Midnapore police lines. Chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee stamped his approval when Sen reported to him after returning from Midnapore.
The nature of the operation is expected to change once the security forces inch closer to Lalgarh. The real strongholds of the Maoists in Lalgarh are interior villages like Kantapahari and Ramgarh. The two villages are around 7km and 11km, respectively, from Lalgarh town. A meeting on demarcating the areas of operation was held in Kolkata yesterday.
The Cobra force was not pressed into service yesterday.
A team from Kolkata police, headed by joint commissioner Ranvir Kumar, will join the forces in Lalgarh.
Indian Air Force helicopters will be deployed for the police march towards Lalgarh for “casualty evacuation” from today. Chopper will carry the injured, if any, of both sides to hospitals.
“A full-fledged attack can result in bloodshed. So, we cannot launch it when the chief minister is not around,” a senior officer of the action squad said.The chief minister is expected to meet the Prime Minister today when he can tell Manmohan Singh that “action” has started.
“We are open to discussions but not at this stage with such a lot of violence being carried out (by the Maoists). Also, all the unauthorised weapons have to be flushed out from the area. That is our priority now”, said top official of the state government.
A CPM activist and three members of an anti-Maoist resistance group abducted Wednesday night were found dead on Thursday in Goaltore. The four were identified as Badal Ahir, 55, Dubraj Soren, 53, his son Dasharath, 35, and brother Chaitanya, 40. Their throats had been slit, heads smashed and bones broken. The four had been buried in a field half-a-kilometre from their homes in Pingboni village, which is about 35km from Lalgarh, where police and central forces have started an operation this afternoon against the Maoists. The seven murders within 48 hours has the CPM top brass in West Midnapore worried.
Members of the People’s Committee Against Police Atrocities, which led the Lalgarh protest, last night raided the CPM’s Dahijuri branch committee office in Binpur, 5km from Jhargram town. About 700 tribals armed with bows and arrows broke all the furniture inside the one-storey office, then piled them outside and set the heap ablaze. No complaint has been lodged against anyone, said a police officer
A newspaper reports: Mamata Banerjee apparently felt embarrassed with Kishanji, chief of the rebels’ armed wing in Bengal, Jharkhand and Orissa, and his Lalgarh deputy Bikash saying on TV that the Maoists had fought together with Trinamul in Nandigram, and adding that Trinamul and the CPM were “two sides of the same coin”. The Trinamul Congress chief was silent on Lalgarh through the day, telling reporters who had gathered at her home: “I am busy with the railway budget.” Party sources said Mamata was tight-lipped out of annoyance with the Maoists. “In Nandigram, we had fought (together) with Trinamul under the banner of the BUPC (Bhoomi Uchchhed Pratirodh Committee)…. I want Mamata to come out with a clear stand on it (the Lalgarh operation),” Kishanji told a TV channel.
A BSF jawan whose battalion was supposed to go to Lalgarh to take part in the anti-Maoist operation was found dead at the force’s base camp in Kharagpur yesterday. Local police are not clear whether 28-year-old Somu Singh from Jharkhand committed suicide. He is said to have died while cleaning his rifle. Whether the bullet that pierced his chest got fired accidentally is being probed.
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