Place: Adhikari Pada, 28 Nov. '07
Our escort, Gautam Das Adhikari belonged to the same pada and village. This was the place where the first assault started in November. Two of the people who were taking refuge in the Nandigram shivir and who were active in the BUPC andolan belonged to this village: Swadesh Das Adhikari and Srikant Das Adhikari. We visited their houses in the villages that were attacked by the CPM people.
We went to Swadesh Das Adhikari’s house and were met by his 90 year old mother, Roshmoi Das Adhikari, sitting in front of her torched house. On 7th November, 5 CPM people attacked her house, and looted and burnt her house in front of her own eyes; 3 of them torched the house while 2 others threatened her with big guns. The ‘Harmads’ (goons) manhandled her, pulled her hair and tried to strangle her. They beat her and blood came out of her mouth.
Her son and most of the other villagers had already run away and taken refuge in the Nandigram camp on 5th-6th Nov. Only she and her neighbors were left behind. Her son too had left because he was an active BUPC member. She knew the perpetrators by face. They were CPM workers and were from Adhikaripada only who very well knew her family. She knew their father’s name.
These people threatened her and kept on asking about her son’s whereabouts and where the arms were hidden in the house. They also threatened her with dire consequences if she told anyone who had burnt her house.
The neighbors, Ashalata and Mahadeb Das Adhikari, were hiding and had witnessed the entire incident. Mahadeb had suffered burns on his chest and arm when a part of their house also caught fire from the neighboring house. The CPM people came to his house too and threatened to hurt him and his wife, daughter and son-in-law if told anybody the truth. They put a big gun on his chest and threatened him to give the statement that Swadesh Ahikari had torched his own home to claim compensation and then ran away.
We also visited Srikant Adhikari’s house which was as badly burnt up. In total 6 houses were torched and their houses were targeted because all were BUPC members. All these people have land and so joined the BUPC as active supporters. They had all ran away with the majority of the villagers to Nandigram camp when violence first broke out. Some villagers returned back to the village on 22nd Nov from the camp with the CRPF escorting them.
The villagers felt safe and protected with the CRPF around. The CRPF patrolled the area incessantly and were the local saviors. It was seen as a non-partisan body on which the people had faith. They wanted the CRPF to stay on for longer period, and feared that as soon as CRPF left, the CPM harmads would again attack them. The pada CPM boys even then threatened them at night, but with the CRPF around they could not harm them openly. The villagers had returned back only because of the CRPF. They were scared that the looting and killing would start again once the CRPF is withdrawn.
We also met a woman, Taposhi Das Adhikari, who had suffered a bullet injury and multiple fractures in the 14th March police firing incident. She still has not received any compensation from the government. In Nov., her family had taken her in her incapacitated state to the jungle and hidden her there as they couldn’t take her away to the camp in her condition.
Place: Mandal Pada,
The first victim claimed by the Nandigram violence, Bharat Mandal, was from the Mandal Pada area of Sonachura village. Sonachura shares its borders with Khejuri[1]. It was across the
Since the beginning of the November clashes most of the villagers had shifted to the Nandigram school camp. Three of the villagers are still missing after the November violence; they had gone to the 10th November peace meeting called by the BUPC, which was attacked by CPM supporters.
Sheikh Suleiman from Jalpai area of Sonachura was one of the injured who had been taken to the PG Hospital in
[1] Khejuri is a CPM stronghold and from January onwards a camp is being run in Khejuri high school for the CPM supporters who fled from Sonachura, Gokulnagar, Gorchakraberia and other BUPC barricaded villahges.
Place: Bhoota Mor,
Bhoota Mor in Gorchakraberia was the first place where the police firing took place on 14th March. It is a mostly Muslim majority area. When we reached the village we went to see Yaseen Ali Shah’s house. He was staying at the
There were other houses that had suffered worse damages and more badly burnt up than Yaseen Ali’s house. We reached E.R. Ali Shah’s burnt house. His son Mehboob Alam told us that on 28th October about 200 TMC supporters came and attacked their house and torched it up. His father was from CPM and many CPM supporters like him were driven away from the village.
Mehboob named Yaseen Ali as one of the TMC supporters who came that day to attack his house. He said that they had 15 beegha land and ready to sell it off for industrialization in the area. There were mane educated and unemployed youth in the village like him who wanted to sell of their land to get employment in the industry to be set up here. Since his family had not joined the TMC/BUPC against the sarkar, they were targeted at by the TMC.
We also met other CPM supporters whose houses were similarly burnt. Manjari Bibi’s house too was torched and broken by the TMC supporters. Her husband had to run away from the village to save his life. He stayed away for 11 months. She and many women left behind like her were ill-treated by the TMC/BUPC people. They were landless labourers; they were made to work in the fields with very meager wages. They were stranded there and treated very badly; and had to do BUPC’s bidding.
Manjari too had fled from the village and stayed in a camp. Mansur Mallik, another CPM person of the village, told us that there were about 3000 CPM people who had fled from the villages in Nandigram from Jan. onwards and taken refuge in Haldia Hathiberia Party Office Camp. He himself had been there for 11 months and worked in for providing relief to the people in the camp.
Those people who had run away or gone to the camps in the intervening months from Jan. to Oct., returned back to the village on 8th Nov. They had no problem in returning back because by that time the TMC and BUPC supporters had fled the village.
Manjari told us that she has received compensation for her house from the government. Many like her support the land acquisition for SEZ as they were landless laborers, share croppers, unemployed youth, artisans who worked as tailors in towns, and believed that the industrialization drive of sarkar would benefit them.
Even the BUPC people who had fled in early Nov. are now returning back to the village. They had no problem in the others coming back as they only wanted to live in peace. The villagers there told us that they only want to live with harmony and without any more clashes.
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