January 7, 2011
“The Lalgarh incident warrants the calling of a bandh, but I don’t want to follow CPM’s sterile bandh politics.”: Mamata
KOLKATA/MIDNAPORE: Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee, who rushed to Midnapore after hearing of the incident at Netai, will hold a public meeting at the College Ground there on Saturday afternoon with the bodies of those killed by CPM gunmen on Friday. “For how long can facts be suppressed? If the harmads are to remain here, what is the need for security forces? In 2007 the CPM had orchestrated a similar attack in Nandigram. People like Biswajit, Salim and Bharat had been killed then. We believe that the bodies of many who were killed at Netai on Friday were disposed of before police reached the spot. The CPM gunmen crossed the river and escaped. They did not shoot to stop the villagers. They fired to kill. A woman`s skull was blown off and a man’s intestines got exposed. If this is not terror in its worst form, what is?” Mamata said after reaching Midnapore on Friday evening. She said that the state government was denying charges while sophisticated arms are being recovered from CPM camps. “The administration is to blame for Friday’s incident. The inspector-in-charge of Lalgarh police station received several complaints from villagers but would do nothing. While men were asked to join the harmads, women were treated as objects of pleasure by the CPM men. This has now turned into Bengal`s fight against CPM. I salute the villagers for standing up against CPM torture,” she said. During the day, she participated in a rally in Kolkata carrying bodies of three Trinamool supporters killed in political violence at Ketugram and Mangalkote. “The Lalgarh incident warrants the calling of a bandh, but I don`t want to follow CPM’s sterile bandh politics. Besides, examinations in schools are going on,” she said in Kolkata. Rather, Mamata called a sit-in demonstration on road crossings for one hour on Saturday. She appealed to intellectuals, writers and artists to rise in protest against the Lalgarh incident. She also appealed to voters to “reply to the bullets of CPM with ballots.” Refuting CPM’s charge that she was doing politics with bodies of people killed in violence, Mamata said there would be no such politics if there was no killing. “When people are shot dead, that is not politics; but if we pay homage to our party workers, that is politics,” she ridiculed. She accused CPM, too, of making politics with one death in Jadavpur during the last municipal polls. The Mangalkote victim was killed brutally. Mamata said the body which was on display had one eye gouged out, there were also several stab marks on the body. “People who perpetrate this kind of violence must not be acceptable in society,” she added.
