Bullets, blood-drenched earth, skulls, crying relatives nail Bengal govt’s lie

The government’s attempt to cover up speaks for itself. The Indian Express today found dozens of used cartridges, grenade shells, a burnt tooth, scraps of at least five different types of clothes, all soaked with blood. Scores of policemen posted here looked the other way. No one warned against tampering with the evidence as people walked around, rummaging through the charred debris.

The CPM cadres were more efficient. On a day when everyone knew that the media would come knocking in this village, they came early this morning and took the entire population of Hemnagar captive. They forced them to lock their houses, desert the village and join their “picnic,” a couple of kilometres away, inside a forest. Everyone had to join.

The only ones spared were a couple of widows, all above 70 years old, and a middle-aged woman, allowed to stay because she delivered a baby last night.

One of the widows, who refused to be identified, said that CPI(M) cadre arrived early this morning from Saltora and Tilbandha and took the villagers hostage. “Everyone will be back, once all of you leave. We have been told not to utter a word,” she said.

Given that Trinamool leader Mamata Banerjee’s rhetoric often borders on the hysterical, yesterday there were sceptical voices as well. After all, this is violent country, where the CPI-M and the Trinamool have been killing each other in a political turf-battle. The last massacre was six months ago in Nannur where 11 Trinamool supporters were killed. In all, over the last two years, more than 1,300 houses have been torched, and 64 people killed, the toll shared almost equally by both parties.

But confronted with the evidence today, the district as well as the state police administration fumbled for explanations. Yesterday, every officer worth his rank had denied vehemently that there had been a massacre, calling it a case of arson. Today, the police acknowledged that “murders have taken place in the house.”

Additional SP S S Panda said: “At least, my skin is saved. Thank God, we had registered a murder case in the police station.” Asked when would the investigation begin, he said: “We are busy with VVIP duty now.”

Superintendent of Police Gaurav Dutta, however, wasn’t taking any chances. “Can’t these be plants?… On Thursday night, these people were on a feast in the night, having killed a goat. The blood can be of that too,” he said. But when asked if tests had been conducted, he said: “Some murders might have also taken place in the house that was set on fire. But the number is anybody’s guess. It can be 1, it can be 11.”

Abdul Rehman, the man who owned the house and who escaped to file an FIR, said that 11 people, all Trinamool supporters had visited the house after Mamata’s rally in nearby Keshpur. All these people, he said, had been hounded out by the CPM only to be killed that day. Quite a few of them have a police record, involved as they were in inter-party clashes.

Those who were present today said that on Thursday night itself, the bodies were removed by the assailants. The next morning, the police arrived. “Some of the policemen pieced together the burnt bones, skulls from the site and took those away,” said a villager. “The police even scraped off the top soil of a courtyard next to the burnt house on which blood had oozed out profusely after the victims were shot and butchered,” the villager said and identified the spot. Even today, the bloodstains were visible.