Send food, not force to Lalgarh: Mahasweta Devi

KOLKATA: Food, and not force is the answer to solve the Lalgarh crisis. Noted writer Mahasweta Devi has asked the Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee

government not to arrest Chhatradhar Mahato, the People’s Committee against Police Atrocities (PCPA) leader.

“If Chhatradhar Mahato is arrested, I’ll go and sit on a dharna outside the office of Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee. This is not the time to send force to Lalgarh,” she told reporters in Kolkata on Monday.

“Whatever the state government is doing is wrong. People are fighting unitedly for certain demands. Respect it. The state government has snatched the rights of people living in Jangalmahal,” she said.

Mahasweta Devi said the Lalgarh movement was another example of the Left Front government’s failure.

“This is one more reason why this government should go. It came with much fanfare but has done nothing for the tribals. The state forest department has protected contractors involved in illegal felling of trees. This has resulted in the loss of livelihood for the forest-dwellers. There are no roads, no water, no electricity. There is no other state like Bengal where the tribals are so deprived.”

The veteran writer said, “The people of Lalgarh have organised themselves to solve their problem. It’s a shame that the state government has declared war on a section of its own people. Give Lalgarh people BPL cards, drinking water, solar lights and see what happens.”

TOI

Lalgarh:Beneath sari, brutal scars

SUJAN DUTTA

Kuldiha, June 21: Shame is abandoned with great effort. But the women of this village are willing to draw up their saris, just to show how brutalised they are. At a relief camp in Pirakata, the crossroad that practically marks the end of the authority of the West Bengal government on the route to Lalgarh, they pulled up saris to reveal weals and scars to show how mercilessly they were beaten by the police.

CPI Maoist Politburo member Koteshwar Rao had spent time in Nagpur

NAGPUR: Maoist master tactician Mullajola Koteshwar Rao, alias Kishanji, who spearheaded the Naxalite insurgency in Lalgarh throwing West Bengal government off track, had spent several years working for the rebels in city and in Gadchiroli, sources here claimed. Rao, along with Chhatradhar Mahato of People’s Committee Against Police Atrocities, had established a ‘liberated’ zone in Lalgarh until state police aided by central paramilitary forces reclaimed it. Rao, along with his wife Sujata, had created much impact in Vidarbha region in the late 80s and early 90s. Rao, a Brahmin scholar of philosophy, had a charismatic personality and could attract cadres into the movement.

Cellphone turns weapon of mass resistance in cop-free zone

PRONAB MONDAL

A member of the People’s Committee speaks to another activist on a journalist’s cellphone to get clearance for the scribe to proceed to a village in Lalgarh last week. AFP

Lalgarh, June 21: A young Lalgarh tribal flaunts his Nokia 1110 despite not knowing how to send a message or save numbers. But he knows how much it means to him and his movement.

“I got this cellphone from our leaders around five-six months ago. This helps me communicate with them and take their instructions,” said the man in his mid-twenties, a village committee member of the People’s Committee against Police Atrocities in Khasjangal, 9km from Lalgarh police station. He has a small notebook of numbers.

A telecom revolution has swept Lalgarh over the past few months, coinciding with the collapse of intelligence as the Maoists-backed people’s committee shut the cops out.

Lalgarh:Govt desperate to woo back tribals

KOLKATA: In a desperate bid to win hearts in Lalgarh, the state government has decided to start Alchiki-medium schools and renew the cheques

issued to 11 women who were tortured by police during a raid in Chhotopelia village last year. The government also plans to go full steam ahead with a special drive to implement the recommendations of the report of backward classes welfare secretary R D Meena a report that was on the back-burner till now.

In January this year, Meena found that allegations of police atrocities in Chhotopelia village of Lalgarh on November 6, 2008 were true. Women had been brutally assaulted by police in the crackdown that followed the Maoist ambush of chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s convoy on November 2. This, and the arrest of school students, proved to be the trigger for the Lalgarh revolt.

Tribals clash with cops

BELPAHARI (W MIDNAPORE): More and more cases of clashes between security forces and tribals — some reportedly sympathisers of Maoists and the rest innocents — are emerging as the battle of Lalgarh enters a crucial phase. On Sunday, when security forces arrested three rebel suspects — Lubu Tudu, Lodhu Singh and Dadan Hansda — they faced a hostile crowd baying for their blood.

Scores of men and women resisted the forces as they caught hold of the three. A woman, Rajari Tudu, led the village folk and attacked the BSF jawans with household knives, injuring a jawan.

Police atrocity: Thousands fleeing Lalgarh

Lalgarh (PTI) Thousands of villagers from violence-hit Lalgarh area were fleeing their homes to take shelter in relief camps, Union Minister of State for Rural Development Sisir Adhikari said on Sunday.

“At least 20,000 people have been rendered homeless.

We will spread this fire, says maoist from Lalgarh

My name is Manoj. It’s not the name my parents gave me, but all my comrades call me ‘Manoj’. My father’s name is Dhiren Murmu. I am his second son Inspired by Mao Zedong, Charu Majumdar and Kanu Sanyal of the CPI (Marxist) develop a “revolutionary opposition” to the party. More Pictures and I am 25. I was born at Bamundanga village in Salboni. I’ve lived most of my life in this hopeless village. Our village falls under the Kansijora gram panchayat. The Left Front has been in power here for 30 years. Salboni has always been a CPM stronghold. But, in 30 years, neither the state government, nor the panchayat and Zilla Parishad took any interest at all in developing this area. We might have been living in the Stone Age. From Naxalbari to Lalgarh:  Maoists breed in swamps of hunger and anger | No revolution for old radicals | Blog: Kolkata’s missing millionaires and Lalgarh When it rains here, the dirt tracks turn muddy and we are forced to drag ourselves and our cattle through the muck. We are not able to ride our bicycles or use carts. We don’t have clean drinking water. People are forced to drink filthy, yellow water. After sunset, we live in the dark as there is no electricity here. No jobs either. During the paddy season, we work in the fields and then sit idle for the rest of the year. Because we are tribals, no one has bothered to do anything for us. In 2002, we got tired of being treated like rodents. So, the villagers got together and demanded development in our area. This infuriated the local CPM bosses. The police and Marxists slapped false cases on us, accusing us of working for the People’s War Group (PWG). They branded us Maoists. So we began to think we might as well join the Maoists. Things turned nasty quickly. The former police superintendent of West Midnapore, K C Meena, lodged an FIR against the entire village. Nearly 90% of the men and teenage boys were charged with being Naxalite. We knew what was coming. We had to do something to save ourselves. I was just 18 at the time. I was in class XII at the local school. But, I too joined in protests against the police. Within days, the police filed a case against me, my father and brother. They accused all of us of working for the PWG. We had nothing to do with the PWG. Our family has always supported the Congress party. In 1998,

Lalgarh: Maoists breed in swaps of hunger and anger

Media commentary on Lalgarh seems to miss out one crucial fact: Till less than a month ago, it was not a Maoist fortress but a place where a place where fascinating experiment with a new kind of politics was being done. Maoists were there but they had to go along with the mood inside Lalgarh, which was certainly not one of forming ‘dalams’ or roving guerrilla squads. In fact, as People’s Committee Against Police Atrocities (PCPA) leader Chhatradhar Mahato told The Times of India this week, “if the state government had done even 10% of what we have done, the situation would have been very different.”

 For more than five months, the PCPA, with popular participation, built reservoirs, dug tube-wells and built roads in the area. The Lalgarh Sanhati Mancha, based in Kolkata, collected money and helped set up a health centre. A committee with five men and five women would take decisions.

The war is not between state and Maoists. It is between state and people:Koteshwar Rao (CPI Maoist Politburo member)

New Delhi: Politburo member of the Communist Part of India-Maoists, Koteshwar Rao, who is leading the fight against the state police in West Bengal, has defied the government and blamed it for the violence. He spoke exclusively to CNN-IBN from a secret location.
The state government and Central Government are propagating that the leaders are away from the area. We never went away from the area, we are in the area, we will be in the area. People are with us,” he said.

Police brutality continues in Lalgarh

Police beat a villager

 A villager begs a policeman to spare him after his arrest near Lalgarh

 Police arrest a villager

‘Lalgarh must be a liberated zone for tribals’

Chatradhar Mahato, convenor of the People’s Committee Against Police Atrocities, told rediff.com on Friday that PCAPA was ready for talks with the state government. “However, if the government resorts to violence, we will put up an equal if not a stronger opposition.”In an interview to rediff.com on Thursday, Gour Chakraborty, the CPI-Maoist’s spokesman put forth the Maoists’ demand for Lalgarh.

“We want the entire Lalgarh to be a liberated zone for the tribals. We want them to have a democracy of their own, a democracy that will be guided by a new and free economy,” Chakraborty said.

Image: A villager begs a policeman to spare him from being arrested at Pirakata

Lalgarh demands Maoist amnesty - Drop all cases since 1998, says leader

OUR BUREAU

April 19: The tribals of Lalgarh want the government to drop all cases against suspected Maoists since 1998 as a condition for allowing police into their area for 12 hours on election day. That is not all, though. They also want former West Midnapore superintendent of police Rajesh Singh to go to Dalilpurchak in the heart of Lalgarh and apologise for “atrocities” in the wake of the mine blast on the chief minister’s route last November and stop “atrocities on tribal women in the name of raids”. After a meeting yesterday, the People’s Committee Against Police Atrocities had mentioned the demand for the former district police chief’s apology but not what is potentially the killer clause: dropping cases.

Orissa:Tribal agitation spre ads as road blockade continues

Bhubaneswar, June 20: Tribal agitation backed by Maoists on Saturday spilled over to fresh areas in Koraput district as road blockades were put up in two blocks of the district, restricting movement of about one lakh people.

Roads in the Narayanpatna block have remained blocked since June 15. Tribals, protesting under the banner of Chasi Mulia Sangha (CMS) agitating to free tribal lands from the clutches of non-tribals, blocked roads in the neighbouring Bandhugaon block also.