Bangla fishers occupy Sunderbans under official noses

It does not take much to extract the truth from the settlers themselves. “Do you hail from Bangladesh?” Lakhan Das would deny with an assertive `No.’ But then a little boy, who works as one of the labouers with Lakhan Das and his ilk in the several small and nameless make-shift fish drying units in Jamboo Deep covering quite a few square kms, will tell you: “Yes we are from Bangladesh.” He would tell you more until some of the managers of these units snubs him and he stops.

“We stay here for fourmonths and leave this place after mid-January every year,” said Jiten Das, a `manager’, in one of these nameless fish drying industries. “Of course, our bosses, who run this business, are all Bangladeshis,” Jiten Das will finally confess!

But for the local fishermen in Namkhana, it’s no more a secret as they feel the pinch with these settlers of Jamboo Deep carrying out “indiscriminate fishing and paying nothing substantial to the administration.”

“For the last five years or more the Bangladeshi fishermen are quietly settling down in Jamboo Deep and carrying out indiscriminate fishing,” the local people said.

Incidentally, state Minister for Irrigation and Waterways Ganesh Chandra Mandal recently said, “We did not notice as one of our islands was illegally taken over for the last five years.” Forest Minister Jogesh Chandra Barman echoing Mandal’s concern recently confirmed that the “settlers will not be allowed to stay on as the island is not meant for human settlement, let alonefishing.”

Interestingly, Block Development Officer Md Abdul Gani, who has his office in Namkhana, said neither he has “any information about such large-scale infiltrations in the island nor he has any record with the help of which he could tell if Jamboo Deep is cleared for human habitation by the Forest Department.”

But officials in the local forest department know better. One of them said on condition of anonymity: “So we have also learnt, like the locals,” adding that “the island is not meant for human settlement and the settlers have already destroyed large part of mangrove forests in the island.”When Jiten Das was asked if he had any official papers to support his and his men carrying out fishing from this island, he had no reply. “We pay the forest department and get a receipt from them,” he added.

When District Magistrate Zakir Hussain was contacted, he refused to comment saying that he must go by “official records, information and not by what a few local people might have to say aboutthe settlers in Jamboo Deep.” When asked if “it’s a denial,” Hussain shot back saying “I denied nothing, only I will not comment on your queries.”

A two-day visit for journalists organised by the Ganatantik Nagarik Samity (GNS), Howrah, a civic rights group, revealed that not all the settlers go back to their homes after mid-January.

A permanent settlement, `Village 420′, has come up in the island which has video parlours and hotels with generators providing power to the settlement areas.

Subhas Datta, general secretary of the GNS in a letter to Union Home Minister L K Advani has called for immediate intervention to save “the ecology and sovereignty” of the Sunderbans island.