Warning about possible Maoist movement in the district of Bengal, once a hotbed

 

Kolkata:

Nearly a decade after Maoist presence shrunk from the tribal-dominated Jangalmahal district of West Bengal after three years of upheaval, police are probing doable motion of the left wing extremists (LWE) and reviews of them making a comeback within the space, as soon as a hotbed.

Director Common of West Bengal Police Virendra held a high-level assembly with a number of different high law enforcement officials on Saturday at Jhargram, 150 km from Kolkata. “We’ve mentioned the LWE state of affairs on the assembly,” he advised reporters.

The officers later visited the Dhangikusum space in Belpahari within the Jhargram district to probe a doable level of entry of the Maoists into Bengal from neighbouring Jharkhand.

On Thursday, 4 youth from West Midnapore district, who had gone to a waterfall on the identical spot, which is one thing of a vacationer draw, reported to police that seven armed Maoists had seized their cell phones.

On Friday, Maoist posters had been discovered at Sinduria village additionally within the Belpahari police station space ordering a contractor to cease constructing an area highway. “Sourav Roy, cease highway building,” the posters written in pink ink mentioned. Beneath that was scrawled the phrases CPI Maoist.

The police is probing the ‘thekadar’ posters and has dismissed the report about Maoists seizing telephones from the vacationers. The Jhargram Superintendent of Police mentioned one of many 4 vacationers had misplaced a cell; nonetheless, maybe on account of household stress over the lack of the telephone, claimed Maoists had taken it away.

However these incidents in fast succession are simply two of 4 suspected Maoist associated incidents in Jhargram district within the final 4 weeks or so.

On 27 August, a home at Ponchapani village within the Belpahari police station was fired upon by unknown individuals. The occupant of the home, a gasoline cylinder supplier, advised police they might have been Maoists who had despatched him an extortion be aware for Rs 2 lakh in July.

Two different contractors or shop-owners within the village had acquired comparable notes. Sources say police are probing the Madan Mahato squad of CPI Maoists which is suspected to be tenting in forests on the Jharkhand Bengal border.

On August 15, about 20 Maoist posters had been discovered at Bhulabheda market in Belpahari that saaid ‘Independence Day ought to be noticed as a black day’. A lady Maoist chief reportedly visited the village the day earlier than and advised locals to maintain their telephones switched off throughout her go to.

These reviews are additionally being probed and the chance that some unscrupulous components are utilizing the CPI Maoist poster menace for extortion. However with the Director Common of Police visiting the district, clearly antennas are up in regards to the doable resurgence of pink terror.

Maoists had surfaced in West Midnapore district of which Jhargram was a component in the course of 2008. In November that yr, then Chief Minister and CPM chief Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s convoy was hit by a landmine planted by Maoists at Salboni.

No less than three districts – West Midnapore, Bankura and Purulia which is a tribal belt loosely referred to as Jangalmahal – had been hit by pink terror. The Lalgarh subdivision now in Jhargram district that was lately carved out of West Midnapore, changed into a no man’s land taken over by the LWE who killed dozens of individuals. It took an enormous CRPF presence to reassert management in about two years.

The Maoist terror was one in all many components that effected a change in authorities in Bengal in Could 2011 with Mamata Banerjee displacing CPM chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya. The Maoist motion successfully ended after M Koteshwar Rao higher generally known as Kishenji, the CPI Maoist chief who spearheading the motion there, was killed in an encounter on 24 November 2011.