TRINAMOOL MP SUPPLIED AMMO TO NAXALITES
By Anirban Roy in Kolkata
THE PRIVATE alliance between the Trinamool Congress and the CPI ( Maoist) has been exposed. Subhendu Adhikari, the Trinamool Congress MP from Tamluk, close to Nandigram, had supplied over 1,000 rounds of ammunition to the Maoist party cadre in Nandigram, claims the Criminal Investigation Department ( CID) of West Bengal police.
Adhikari, the son of union minister of state in the ministry of rural development Sisir Kumar Adhikari, was active during the Trinamool Congress led fight against the Left Front government’s plans to acquire land in Nandigram. This had first led to police firing in March 2007 and later to a pitched battle between Maoist cadres and the police in August 2008.
According to the CID’s interrogation of Madhusudan Mondal, the Maoist zonal committee secretary for Nandigram, the Maoists set up a base in Nandigram only after March 2007 and began arming the local cadres with the help of Trinamool Congress.
The CID had arrested Mondal on June 29 from Amtala in South 24- Parganas district. A copy of the interrogation report of the Maoist leader is available with M AIL T ODAY . Mondal told the police that Adhikari supplied ammunition for the CPI ( Maoist) members to fight the CPI ( M) and the police in Nandigram. Meanwhile, the over ground activists of the Maoist party along with the Trinamool and others had set up the Bhumi Ucched Pratirodh Committee ( BUPC) to mobilise people against land acquisition.
Adhikari termed the report as totally false, and said it was being circulated with the intention to malign him. “ Our movement was a non- violent movement,” he claimed, adding that Trinamool members were rather victims of the CPI( M)’ s armed attacks in Nandigram.
“ If we used arms, why was no one from the other side injured or killed?” Adhikari questioned. He said it was an attempt by West Bengal chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee to target the Trinamool Congress. About 35 Marxist cadres, including two local committee secretaries — from the Kendamari local committee and Sonachura local committee — were killed over one and half years of the Maoist- led fight against the CPI( M).
Adhikari is a commerce graduate. He was a member of the West Bengal Pradesh Congress Committee and later president of the Trinamool youth wing in Midnapore. He has declared assets worth Rs 5 crore, including buildings, apartments and non- agricultural land.
Mondal’s confession has confirmed that the anti- land acquisition movement was far from being non- violent. During the interrogation, he said the Maoists wanted to kill Laxman Seth, the then CPI ( M) MP from Haldia.
Mondal claimed that the Maoists, BUPC cadres and the Trinamool worked in tandem to thwart the government’s attempt to acquire land in Nandigram. Mondal has been charged with offences under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, 1967. Interestingly, a member of Mondal’s Maoist committee is a Trinamool activist, Chandan Pramanik.
The members of the zonal committee are Siddhartha Mondal, Pramanik and Radheshyam Giri. Pramanik is also the anchal ( area) secretary of the Trinamool at Khejuri and is underground. All the other members of the Nandigram unit have been arrested. The first Maoist zonal committee of Nandigram was formed in September 2007 in the presence of Maoist leaders Telegu Deepak and Sudip Congder in the house of Khokon Sheet. Madhusudan Mondal was made secretary. Local Trinamool leaders began aiding the Maoist operations as soon as the committee was formed.
According to the police interrogation report, armed Maoist cadres — Bantul, Kartik, Badal, Mukti, Jhantu and Juna — were sent to Trinamool’s local Nandigram leader Nishikanta Mondal to counter the CPI( M) and the police, Mondal said. Deepak and Congder liaised with Nishikanta and other Trinamool and BUPC leaders for the armed operations.
Two training camps were organised at the Sonachura Primary School and Sonachura Shitala Mandir. More than 50 BUPC and Trinamool members undertook training. Maoist commanders Ranjit Pal, Congder and Deepak had imparted the training. Mondal told his interrogators that as the movement in Nandigram was gaining momentum, Congder had brought four .303 rifles and one 9 mm carbine from the Jangalmahal area. He handed the weapons over to Sheet. Subsequently, Congder brought 18 rifles of .315 caliber.
One make- shift arms- manufacturing unit had been set up in an abandoned house in Goalpara village near Sonachura, the interrogation report revealed. A man identified as Barun was in charge of the gun factory, and had manufactured 50 firearms of .315 caliber to fight the CPI(M) cadres and the police. Mondal told the police that the Maoist Nandigram zonal unit was in possession of 20 claymore mines, of which, only three were used. The other mines were deactivated as per the advice of the Trinamool members.
After the state committee of the CPI( Maoists) decided to withdraw cadres from Nandigram, some of the arms and ammunition were deposited with four Trinamool leaders, the report said.
Five .315 rifles and one .303 rifles were kept with Sheikh Sahabuddin of Hossainpur, four .315 rifles, two .303 rifles and one 9 mm carbine were kept with Nishikanta. Three .315 rifles and one .303 rifle were kept with Indra Karan and Panchanan Das in Khejuri village.
Later, the BUPC and Trinamool leaders refused to return the weapons and ammunition to the Maoists. However, Mondal claimed that the Maoists were not responsible for Nishikanta Mondal’s killing in September last year. Mondal is from Durgachowk village in East Midnapore district. His parental landed property near Haldia Port was acquired by the Kolkata Port Trust ( KoPT), with promises of a permanent job and monetary compensation. But, the family did not get anything.
Soon he joined the Sangrami Shramik Mancha, an organisation fighting for the families that lost their land to the KoPT. He was arrested in 2004 for clashing with a CPI( M) member. In 2006, he returned to his village, and was arrested again in connection with the old case. In jail, he met many people from Nandigram, and became close to them. On January 2, 2007, he went to Nandigram, and started taking part in the movement against land acquisition spearheaded by the BUPC. During his stay in Nandigram, he was motivated and indoctrinated in Maoist ideologies by Ajit Das alias Nirmal Das, a state committee member of the CPI (Maoist). On April 27, 2007, he met Maoist leaders Deepak, Congder and few others, and decided to join the organisation.
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