‘We gave up land for power plant, now they are firing at us for demanding electricity’

Lights switch off forever in three homes: killed in police firing are a 19-year-old who wanted to be an engineer, a daily wager with 3 kids, unidentified youth.

“Seventeen years ago we gave up our land for the NTPC (National Thermal Power Corporation) plant. We thought it will light our lives. But today they are firing bullets at us for demanding electricity”.

Kahalgaon’s Ramdev Mandal speaks for his dusty town in Bhagalpur district where, in a rare for Bihar, people have risen above caste and community to join hands in demanding regular supply of electricity.

Despite three lives lost in police firing, Kahalgaon is sticking to its demand for the right to power — it was an unusual Sunday today because the supply lines worked through the day after a very long time.

But in three homes, the lights have been switched off forever. One was hoping to become an engineer, the second worked as a labour hand to feed his three children while the third, another youth, remains unidentified. All three died in police firing as people protested on the streets for power.

Sumit Kumar was just 19. The son of a security guard with the Eastern Coalfields Ltd at Lalmatia in Jharkhand, he wanted to be an engineer. He had moved out of his village in Godda to study science at the SSV College in Kahalgaon, sharing a small room in a local lodge with three other students.

But studying in Kahalgaon became a problem because there was hardly any electricity — a severe power crisis in a town housing an NTPC power generation unit.

“Sumit and I studied in the same college. The students were the first to protest the power crisis because our studies were suffering. It later became a mass agitation,” Satyajit Chowbey told The Indian Express. Sumit’s other friends, however, maintained he was buying vegetables in the market last Friday when he was felled by a police bullet.

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Mohammad Aslam, the 32-year-old who worked as a labour hand, lived in a slum where his hut had a single bulb, the wire hooked to the mains. On Saturday, he was killed in police firing. Pankaj Kumar, the ward commissioner, claimed Aslam was shot in cold blood. “A daily wage labourer, he was lifting sand in the market. The police simply called out and fired a shot from close range,” alleged Kumar.

Whatever the truth, Aslam, the breadwinner of a family of five, is dead. No one here has any idea how to explain it to his wife and three young children that Aslam died during a protest for electricity.

In the town, the anger still rages. Kahalgaon was shut for the third today and people chased away policemen and politicians who came to express solidarity. A CISF vehicle was set on fire as residents demanded that those behind the firing be charged with murder because “you can’t kill people if they ask for something as basic as electricity”.