NARKOPI (BIHAR), SEPT 17: For Bihar, the story was sickeningly familiar. As villagers in tiny Narkopi went around doing their shopping on the afternoon of September 13 at the weekly bazaar, around 50 armed men struck. The shootout lasted hours, by the end of which six were dead and many grievously injured. The villagers turned to the police, and the latter "turned away". "We requested the police to open fire to disperse them, but the police remained mute," says a villager, Mohammed Ismail.If the police wanted to take action, there had been many warnings. The men who attacked the village on September 13 are believed to have been members of the Maoist Communist Centre (MCC), which has targeted Narkopi Muslims at least twice in the recent past. In the first incident in June, suspected MCC ultras had set afire three trucks of Ali Akhtar. Last month, the grocery shop of Kurban Ansari, another villager, had been burnt.A village of around 210 huts - 80 owned by Muslims, 40 by Dalits and 90 by tribals - Narkopi has become a battleground ever since the Ali Sena was set up as a private army of Muslim youths in the neighbouring Lohardaga district in 1998 to fight the MCC and PWG. Its chief Shahabuddin is in jail facing more than a dozen cases of murder, dacoity, rape and looting. In his absence, the Sena is reportedly being run by two residents of Narkopi - Mohammed Usman and Mohammed Ismail - against whom too there are a dozen cases of murder, looting, dacoity and extortion."Usman collects levy (tax) for the Ali Sena from all those who sell goods at the bazaar in Narkopi, where his supporters gather every Wednesday. Aware of this, the MCC launched the attack that day," says a senior police officer. "The Ali Sena is a gang of criminals," the Ranchi SSP adds, talking to The Indian Express at the site of the carnage.Before last Wednesday's attack, posters had come up in the village, believed to have been put up by the MCC, declaring: "The Ali Sena activists are criminals, reactionaries, dacoits and looters of property.If they don't mend themselves, they would be lynched."On Wednesday, the MCC's attack had been repulsed by members of the Ali Sena. Six Muslims and an equal number of tribals had died in the incident, with three bodies being recovered on Thursday. Three of the tribals who died have been identified as MCC activists and were residents of the neighbouring Patratoli village.If Muslims drew the MCC's wrath, the tea shop of a tribal, Saku Oraon, was set ablaze by Ali Sena activists, reportedly before the very eyes of the police. Says Ismail: "Oroan paid as he was suspected of being an MCC sympathiser."Another villager, Mohammed Idris, recalls how his friends were told to sit down quietly by suspected MCC men and then shot, at point-blank range, before his eyes. Among the six Muslims who died, many belonged to a neighbouring village.A deceptive calm prevails at Narkopi now, with the police camping at the site and the atmosphere between the Muslims and tribals tense. If a trembling Oraon, visibly scared even in the presence of the police, says, "The MCC never ever harasses innocent people in this village," Mohammed Umar is equally assertive that there is no Ali Sena. "There is no problem among the people here," Umar insists. "The RSS activists in the guise of the MCC have left the village divided and devastated."The sad part is, whoever the culprit, it's Narkopi that will continue to pay.
