CM spoke of non-cop gunshots: Minister

BISWAJIT ROY

Bhattacharjee: Smelling a rat Calcutta, March 19: Hours before the CBI stumbled on the CPM’s “Red Brigade” in Nandigram and arrested 10 men with arms, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee had confided to cabinet colleagues that not all who died there were victims of police firing, a minister said. Some of them succumbed to other gunshots and injuries caused by sharp weapons, the minister quoted the chief minister as saying on Saturday morning. The CPM state leadership, however, refused to comment on the arrest of the 10 suspects from a brick kiln in Nandigram on Saturday afternoon. Instead, the party today floated an “outsider” theory and claimed that two of the 14 dead were CPM “sympathisers”. The preliminary post-mortem reports of five victims submitted to the CBI on Saturday night had said sharp weapons and bombs were also used in Nandigram. Party state secretariat member Benoy Konar today said five out of the victims who are yet to be identified were “outsiders”. However, according to state government records, 12 of the 14 killed have been identified, all of whom belong to villages in Nandigram. The 13th body was identified late tonight. Joydev Das, 24, a resident of Sonachura, was lying at the Tamluk hospital morgue . The minister who quoted the chief minister said the issue came up at Saturday’s Left Front meeting. “The reports I am receiving, particularly the post-mortem findings, suggest that police firing alone was not responsible for the deaths in Nandigram,” he quoted Bhattacharjee as saying. “Some of the victims sustained gunshot injuries, apparently fired from non-police firearms, as well as injuries inflicted by sharp weapons. Some ghastly murders took place in the confusion of the police crackdown. These reports perturb me more. Let me gather all the post-mortem reports before I come to any conclusion.” Left Front allies — the RSP, CPI and the Forward Bloc — took this to be an admission by Bhattacharjee of the presence of armed CPM partisans along with the police in Nandigram. They asked both the government and the CBI to “uncover the truth about outsiders’ role”. Today, state home secretary Prasad Ranjan Roy said the government would probe complaints of police connivance with “armed outsiders” and promised to punish the officers found guilty. Konar echoed Bhattacharjee. “Those who died of bullet injuries did not fall to police firing alone. Other bullets were also fired,’’ he said. Konar refused to comment on his party’s links with the 10 men arrested after the CBI crackdown. But he stressed that the party wanted to regain control of Nandigram. “Had we been able to make our way back inside Nandigram, we would have changed the situation within 10 days. They (Opposition) knew it and that’s why they resisted us doggedly,” he said. Konar alleged two of the 14 victims were CPM sympathisers who were used as cannon fodder by the Bhoomi Uchchhed Protirodh Committee. “They were compelled to be at the front of the force resisting the police. As they tried to flee, they were stabbed to death.” http://www.telegraphindia.com