6/30/13

GovernanceNow.com | Will rape-murder in Kamduni be Mamata's Nandigram?

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Home New s Will rape-murder in Kamduni be Mamata's Nandigram?

Will rape-murder in Kamduni be Mamata's Nandigram?

Mamata Banerjees unbalanced reaction to the gangrape and murder of a 20-year-old rural undergrad 25 km from Kolkata has forged an unprecedented anti-Trinamool agitation in West Bengal
KA JA L BA SU | KOLKA T A | JUNE 2 8 2 0 1 3 View Im age

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Kajal Basu Basu is contributing editor with Gov ernance Now. In Other Stories This bloody state: West Bengal's decadence ov er the decades The rule of exem ptions: The Central (Absolute) Exem ptions Act 2 01 1 Toonpur ki Mam ata and her brush with blue-sky gov ernance Is Mam ata Banerjee sinking Mam ata Banerjee? Being broke is statistically fine for Mam ata's Bengal gov t The real reason for Kolkata ban on Rushdie's v isit Treating Accused Num ber 6 as a m an, not child Why Rushdie could not go to Kolkata The state offence against Irom Sharm ila Maa Saradhas only son: Sudipta Sens letter to CBI In This Section
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West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee has nev er been in more trouble than she is in today . The deeper trouble for the state and for society , for women in the state, in particular, and, of course, for the democratic-electoral process is that she doesnt seem to comprehend it. And thats surprising, giv en that the signs that she might hav e met her personal Nandigram on June 1 8 are ev ery where. Although her once-supporters hav e been jumping the Trinamool Congress dhow since a few months after she came to power, whats really brought her infeasibility home to the state is her increasingly bizarre behav iour since that day , when she v isited Kamduni, a stunningly beautiful v illage of 258 lower-class households surrounded by lakes and ponds and located 25 km north of Kolkata. But its beauty doesnt reflect the fear that it has alway s liv ed in and Banerjees was a v isit 1 0 day s too late. On June 8, an especially brutal day light gangrape and murder of a 20-y ear-old undergrad in the v illage left West Bengal astonished at the criminal rot eating its insides, and Banerjees v isit was an unwilling reaction to opposition parties which, naturally , were milking the tragedy for all it was worth. The y oung woman, returning from her second-y ear ex ams in Kolkata, was grabbed at the approach to the v illage, at about 2.30 pm by a group of ruffians (all documented as TMC enforcers) and gangraped ov er sev eral hours inside a walled compound. They then threw her body into a bheri (fishpond) across a 1 4-ft-high earthwork lev ee running in front of the compound. It was ev idence disposal of stunning insouciance, or stupidity , akin to being unafraid of dumping a smoking gun nex t to a gunshot murder. It was, as the autopsy report (which has gone almost entirely unpublicised) shows, also not just a release of lust: the rapists had stuffed her sanitary pad to stop her from screaming, ripped her up to the nav el, broken her femur in sev eral places and slit her throat. It was massiv e ov erkill; and it ex plains why the v illagers of Kamduni hav e since been so enraged ov er Banerjees inex plicable but by all ev idence, psy chologically unbalanced attack on them, and inability to get the police to file a charge-sheet in 1 5 day s, as she had promised.

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The CMs trip to Kamduni was so hush-hush that neither the Trinamool MLA of Barasat, the actor Chiranjit Chakraborty , nor Barasat MP Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar, had foreknowledge of it. Banerjee then spent a full six minutes with the v ictims family , asking after the health of the pater familias, a daily labourer dependent upon the MNREGSs iffy largesse but felled by pulmonary weakness, with ty pical ov er-familiarity . It took Banerjee a second to become ill-at-ease when she heard the commotion outside of women protesting the endemic absence of safety in the area, at which she blew her fuse, snapped at TMC MP Mukul Roy (her flav our-of-the-season right-hand man who was instrumental in conv incing her to go to Kamduni), This is why I didnt want to come, and bustled out. Most of Kamdunis 1 90-odd women led by Tumpa and Moushumi Koy al, whov e gone on to become sy mbols of apolitical rage against two y ears of unrelenting criminality in the state pursued Banerjee asking for her interv ention. Banerjee had, by then, giv en in to her generalpurpose resentment and all-purpose misogy ny that is nev er far below the surface, and she ended up screaming at the women to Shut up, shut up, shut up! and Y ou are Maoists and CPM!. When the women protested this cardholder identity , she shouted, Chorer maay er bodo gola! (The thiefs mother shouts the loudest), swung into her car, slammed the door and huffed off. (But Kamduni, as Banerjee knew full well, is a Trinamool stronghold: It is part of the Kirtipur-II gram panchay at, where 1 1 of the 1 2 seats hav e gone uncontested to the Trinamool, which basically means that Trinamools enforcers in Barasat scared off the Left Fronts putativ e candidates.) Within an hour, she had found two scapegoats, as she would imagine many others in the day s to come conspiratorial civ il society , pornographic talk-show participants, rape-impelling population growth, a murderous major media house. In each case, she has been dead wrong, but too incapacitated by messianism to acknowledge it. Earlier, Banerjee had turned to a chastened Mukul Roy and food and supplies minister Jy otipriy a Mallick (who is also the minister in charge of the North 24 Parganas district) and shot off an allegation that neither she nor any body else has since repeated (because such an indiscretion can cost v aluable v otes in this outwardly most secular of Indian states): People crossing ov er from Bangladesh are committing these crimes. I hav e to speak to the Border Security Force (BSF). This cannot go on. Like with almost all her indiscretions, this one would recur in a few day s. She would tell the media, These areas [like Barasat] are fully unplanned. The CPM captured v ast tracts of land and doled them out to any Tom, Dick and Harry , without bothering about the areas dev elopment. There are no police stations or proper communication along these areas and people are pay ing the price for the CPMs misrule. She added that she would ask the BSF to step up v igil as criminals from across the border commit rape and murder here and then escape to the other side. I would like to congratulate people as they are becoming more aware. Prev iously people could not ev en file FIRs. But, in point of fact, Banerjee has failed Barasat which has been a hotbed of activ ity for three decades, since the unceasing Bangladeshi migration began more than the CPM. There are a mere 350 cops of the West Bengal police entrusted with safeguarding 1 5 lakh people in the 286 sq km that fall under the Barasat police station. (In contrast, there are more than 26,000 policemen in Kolkatas 246 sq km.) T he T rinam ool connection Her finger-quiv ering accusation that the men were CPM is false. The key accused, Ansar Ali, who intimidates Kamdunis inhabitants by merely glowering, as he did at the Barasat district court where he was arraigned, is a known Trinamool and former CPM enforcer and nephew of the Trinamool-controlled Kirtipur-II gram panchay at head Say eeda Bibi (who is married to Trinamools Kirtipur-II block president, Ashraf Ali Mollah the whole block, therefore, is ruled by a single family ). He also owns a 2.63-acre bheri and, according to locals, has long had his ey es on the giant, 39.5-acre waterbody that defines Kamduni and has made it such a magnet for free-range hoodlums and political enforcers since 1 97 3, the y ear the Amitabh Bachchan-starring Saudagar released. (The film, Indias official entry in the best foreign language film category for the 46th Oscar Academy Awards and rejected bombed at the box office, making Rs 5 lakh against its production cost of Rs 7 .5 lakh. But it helped wreck forev er the peace in the still-stunning purlieu of Kamduni by making its fisheries, as the film teams thank-y ou note put it, far too famous for comfort.) According to records of the Barasat police station, Ansar Ali was arrested in 201 1 for rioting in the adjacent Parkharibari v illage, where another accused, Aminur Darbar, comes from. (Darbar is the rebel in a hardcore Red family , and like all quislings, is more loy al than the king.) Saiful Ali molested a woman in Kamduni in early 201 3, and was fined Rs 1 6,000. Aminoor, a cutter in a marble factory , joined Ansar Alis mini-mafia after the 2009 Lok Sabha elections. Bhutto Ali is the groups muscleman. Noor Ali Hossain is a koshai (butcher). Gopal Naskar and Bholanath Naskar guarded Ansar Alis bheri.
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Since 201 1 , they hav e all been Trinamool hatchetmen. Nonetheless, Jy otipriy a Mallick felt compelled to return to the Red bogey : All the eight people used to be members of the priv ate army of CPM strongman Majid Master. His murder sy ndicates killed 92 people in the area in 34 y ears. Ansar used to be the right-hand man of Majid Master, from whom he learnt the tactics of capturing fishponds. Not that he is wrong: Ansar Ali was part of the priv ate army of Majid Ali, aka Majid Master, a CPM secretariat member of North 24 Parganas district credited with making it a Left Front stronghold. The militia operated across 1 2 v illages in Sashon panchay at. But heres what Mallick didnt say , which Mamata Banerjee, his micromanaging boss, couldnt not hav e been aware of. Majid Master, who was accused of hav ing TMC worker Noor Ali Mohammad murdered when he was guarding a bheri that he wanted to appropriate, was arrested in March 201 1 , released on bail in May 201 1 , and hav ing obstinately refused to transfer loy alty to TMC rearrested in April 201 3. Ansar Alis orders had alway s been to secure for the Trinamool the approx imately 1 3,1 7 5 acres of bheris in the area. With Majid Master out of the reckoning, Ansar Ali could finally get his machinery in motion and rape, pillage and blackmail hav e alway s been the easy -use weapons in the bheri war in West Bengal. Moreov er, the bheris of Kamduni are adjacent to the Kharibari Sashon area, whose economy rev olv es around prawn cultiv ation. Persecution com plex This is not to say that Banerjee has ev en implicitly adv ocated these weapons in Trinamools driv e to take ov er the most lucrativ e rackets in the state. But few people here believ e that she had no inkling that these weapons were being used. Illegal migration from Bangladesh and the matter of using illegal Bangladeshi migrants as a v ote bank has been the single dominant theme of ev ery West Bengal election since 2006. Banerjees dissimulation, and rejection of Muslims as Bangladeshi criminals, is going to cost her as much as her early 201 2 announcement of honoraria of Rs 2,500 per month to each imam of a mosque and Rs 1 ,000 per month to each muezzin and her reneging of the deal three months later when she realised that the state coffers just didnt hav e the handout money that her throwaway largesse demanded. In the following weeks, a watch-the-Banerjee-jatra mania gripped West Bengal. On TV , she ranted: There is a conspiracy to kill me and party general secretary Mukul Roy . CPM, Congress, BJP and Maoists hav e joined hands. (June 1 8) CPM has joined hands with Maoists in making a blueprint to kill me and make room for their return to power in Bengal. (June 1 9) The police told me, Do y ou know there is a conspiracy to kill y ou? I know the CPM, the Congress and Maoists hav e been conspiring to kill me. But the plan is of [a media house]. They are inv olv ed in planning, I can say that. (June 1 9) Eminent people who dress up and appear on talk shows to discuss rape with relish, many of them are associated with pornography They discuss rape and gangra pe for money . These arent talk shows, these are money shows. (June 20) There is a conspiracy to kill me. The Congress, CPM, BJP and the Maoists hav e joined hands. (June 20) I can see what no one can. I hav e been watching them for the past 35 y ears and can easily recognise them (Maoists). I ev en told police to keep a watch on them. The place is isolated and ideal for them to indulge in a conspiracy . (June 20) The central gov ernment has been telling me about the danger to my life. But I am not afraid of getting killed. Are all women in Bengal getting raped? (June 23) They blame me for ev ery thing. Now, they are ev en blaming me for rape. As if it was I who went to rape... Only if I were a man. The problem here is one that has not been ev ident in any political leader in post-Independent India a giant persecution complex . On April 9, when state finance minister Amit Mitra had been manhandled by a bunch of ov er-zealous Left y ouths in New Delhi, she wrenched the spotlight on herself by loudly fretting, They had an iron rod, tried to hit me with it... They can kill me but they cannot stop me. This daftness had been on show ev en more than a y ear ago. On May 22, 201 2, she had told the Washington Post newspaper that the CPM and Maoists were plotting to kill her with the help of Pakistans Inter-State Serv ices, financed by North Korea, V enezuela and Hungary . They hav e giv en me the death sentence, she said. As for the state of womens safety in West Bengal, the National Crime Record Bureaus report (201 2) is unambiguous: in 201 1 -1 2, at 30,942 cases of crimes against women, the state, with 7 .5

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GovernanceNow.com | Will rape-murder in Kamduni be Mamata's Nandigram?

percent of the national population, accounted for 1 2.67 percent of such cases in India. The number of rape cases was 2,31 7 . The rate of increase ov er the prev ious y ear was 31 .9 percent. In 201 2-1 3, according to a recent NCRB report (June 1 1 , 201 3), West Bengal recorded 30,942 crime cases against, including 4,1 68 of kidnapping, 593 of dowry deaths and 1 9,865 cases of domestic cruelty . The number of rapes recorded was 2,046. All fall down? After Kamduni, Banerjee has lost the battle with her ax is of ev il (the Left Front, the Congress, the BJP, the Maoists) or at least her ex traordinarily schmaltzy attempt to demonise it and might ev en hav e cost herself the allegiance of heretofore loy al women in the state. On telev ision news channels across the state, womens recall of her offhand, pre-inv estigation dismissals of rape accusations seems to hav e hardened into a conv iction of misogy ny . She had dissed the Park Street rape v ictim on February 6, 201 2, a day after the gangrape, turning off the states buddhijeebi (intellectuals) support faucet. Kamdunis women are on the warpath. And news has come in that women in the Murshidabad country side and in Barddhaman are demanding that heads roll in gov ernment after three women were raped there. Kamduni, to Mamatas discomfiture, has energised both semi-activ e and ev en half-dead organisations and mov ements. The Students Federation of India and Democratic Y outh Federation of India rallied together a day after Banerjees v isit to Kamduni. The Patanjali Y oga Samiti, which comprises followers of Baba Ramdev , held a candlelight v igil, a counterpoint to a post-Kamduni shot in the arm of sorts of the West Bengal chapter of the BJP. (Kamduni is a Hinduonly v illage, and organisations such as the Hindu Samhati hav e got into the epistolary act, shooting off letters of protest to the gov ernor. In fact, Hindu Samhati activ ists clashed with the police in Barasat, and the Akhil Bharatiy a V idy arthi Parishad held a rally .) The All-India Democratic Students Organisation is back on its feet; so is the Association for Protection of Democratic Rights; the West Bengal College and Univ ersity Teachers Association, the Nari Nirjatan Pratirodh Mancha and Maitree hav e gained larger leads than the civ il society that helped in no small way to bring Banerjee to power and that she now detests. Kamduni ev en found a v ery unlikely ally in a Trinamool rebel unafraid of speaking her mind MLA Shikha Mitra, who criticised Banerjees intolerance and supported the barely -abov e-pov erty -line Kamduni women who Banerjee had v ilified as Maoists and CPM. Mitra, wife of Trinamool MP Somen Mitra, said, The chief minister is in a better position to say who those women were. To me they nev er looked like Maoists but ordinary v illage housewiv es. I salute the v illagers who are protesting against the atrocities on women ... In my opinion any person sitting in her (chief ministers) chair should be more responsible. There is nothing wrong in making mistakes. We all do that. But one should hav e the patience of listening to people and hearing criticism ... I am happy that v illagers, women and intellectuals hav e now taken to the streets in protest. None of this would hav e been imaginable ev en day s before the Kamduni incident.

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