Wanted Maoist is ‘brilliant’ missing son

“Everyone has the same query. Do we have any news that Abhishek has been killed in a gunbattle with police in some jungle in West Midnapore? To tell you the truth,we have received no news,either from the state administration or from the Maoists. But we have been reading reports that Abhishek has either been critically injured or killed in an encounter. Should anything of such nature happen to our son,we should be given his body,” says Ashesh Mukherjee.

Police sources said there has been communication between Lalgarh Maoists and their “overground contacts” that a “student comrade” was critically injured in the gunbattle on March 26 in which Kishenji is suspected to have been injured as well.

The “student comrade” is a reference to Abhishek,a Jadavpur University drop-out.

All that his parents say is that he came visiting “about 20 days ago,” a few days after his birthday on February 28 and then disappeared,leaving them clutching at recollections.

Abhishek’s father,who cycles door-to-door as a private tutor to neighbourhood students,fishes out yellowing newspaper clips to show stories of his “brilliant son.” One clip,from a Bengali newspaper in 1994,mentions how Abhishek,when he was only 13,had become a “wonder boy having mastered 13 languages” — four foreign and nine regional.

After graduating from school in Chandernagore — “our mission was to give him the best education,” says his father — Abhishek joined Jadavpur University as a student of international relations in 2001. He soon became prominent in the arts faculty spearheading a movement in the university against the semester system.

In 2004,he took a leading role against the JU authorities’ decision to expel five student protestors. Abhishek,along with other students,started a hunger strike in June 2005 and formed the Forum for Arts Students (FAS),known as an “ultra-Left” student body with considerable influence on campus.

By 2006,he is said to have developed “very close ties” with Left extremists and never completed his post-graduation in International Relations.

“I never taught him to take up arms against the state. But I could see he used to suffer acute pain for the poor and downtrodden. We,ourselves,live in acute poverty and we just about manage a hand-to-mouth existence. Abhishek saw all of this.”

His parents say he cleared the IAS Mains in 2005-6 but got “disillusioned” and then “entangled” in the snowballing Singur-Nandigram agitation. By 2007,Abhishek was deeply involved with the Nandigram agitation and when a Tata Motors showroom was ransacked in Kolkata,police booked Abhishek for the crime. They reached his house but failed to get him.

Police sources said Abhishek went undergound after March 14,2007,the day 14 people were killed in police firing in Nandigram,setting off strident anti-CPM protests across the state. He earned the trust of Maoist leaders Telugu Deepak — who was arrested earlier this month — and Kishenji and according to his police dossier,Abhishek quickly became a key member of the Maoists’ Lalgarh squad.

According to a senior CID official,Abhishek was close to Swapan Dasgupta,editor of the Bengali version of Maoist mouthpiece People’s March and got to know senior Maoist leaders through him.

Dasgupta died in police custody in February.

“We had information that Abhishek held an important position in the Maoist ranks. He lived in the forest,received arms training and participated in several operations. He had a squad shadow name,Aranya. Like other Maoist leaders,he had several false names of which Vikram was one,” said a police official.

The e-mail threat allegedly sent to the Orissa Chief Minister mentioning Vikram is believed to be a reference to Abhishek.