Maoists kill 7 Forward Bloc men

The victims included a woman pradhan and five members of a gram panchayat.

In A pre-dawn attack suspected to have been carried out for political gains,Maoist rebels shot dead seven members of the Forward Bloc a constituent in the ruling Left Front in Jhalda block of Purulia on Friday. The victims included a woman pradhan and five members of a gram panchayat.

Police said about 40 armed Maoists raided villages in Jhalda block,dragged out the panchayat members from their houses and shot them dead. Their bodies were recovered from villages of Ayodhyay Hills by the police on Friday.

The police identified the woman victim as Chapala Gorai,the pradhan of Jhalda-Dorda gram panchayat. Five other victims were also members of the same panchayat,they said. The seventh victim,Tapan Singh Sardar,was the brother of the Sabhadipati of Jhalda 1 panchayat samiti.

With the killings,the Jhalda-Dorda gram panchayat has now become defunct.

The police and Left leaders suspect a political angle in the killings as the Left and Congress were engaged in a tussle for control ahead of the Assembly elections due in 2011. They alleged that the Maoists were hired to carry out the killings for political gains.

Its time the Trinamool and the Congress explain their stand on the Maoists, CPM state secretary Biman Bose said,reacting to the killings.

In this panchayat,the Forward Bloc had six members and the Congress five. One member is from CPM,who supported Bloc. Earlier,the Bloc and CPM did not have any alliance here but as they grew closer,the Congress was alleged to be getting friendly with the Maoists,sources said.

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Forward Bloc state secretary Ashok Ghosh said: I could never imagine that the Maoists could become so ruthless.

Hafiz Alam Sairani,Forward Bloc state secretariat member,blamed the Congress for the killings. We have a stranglehold in Purulia. Earlier,we had good political equations in the area with Congress. But in the last panchayat election,in several blocks and GPs,we shared power with the CPM. So,the political equation at the grassroots level changed. We are sure that Maoists have murdered them,but it seems that the Maoists were hired by some people so that the opposition can capture the GP before assembly election, he said.

He alleged that more than 10 party supporters and leaders had been killed in the district by Maoists since October. Prabhat Mahto,Forward Bloc MLA from Arsha said,The Maoists do not have any interest in killing seven of our party members and making one panchayat completely defunct. We have information from our local sources that the Maoists were hired by the Congress leaders of the area.

Zulfiqar Hassan,IG,Western range,said: After initial investigation it seems that the operation was led by Ranjit Paul,area commander of the Maoists in the area. Ranjit might have been paid to kill them. The killing was not done to terrorize people8230;. There might have been a political conspiracy behind this.