THE DAKMASTER NEXUS
Two months ago, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee was working on an altogether different plan— aspiring to be numero uno on the nonBJP side in Indian politics, displacing the Congress. The Trinamool Congress’s foray into Goa, her confabulations with key Opposition figures, her party’s statements against the GOP, all of it presaged an ambitious expansion strategy. So a strike on her turf was only to be expected. Two gruesome murders and a carnage within the span of a month— between February 18 and March 21— have offered that opening to her rivals.
The three incidents, especially the
Bagtui massacre of March 21 night, have shaken up the state. Eight people, including six women and a child, were gutted alive after miscreants set ablaze a dozen houses to avenge the murder of a local TMC leader, Bhadu Sheikh. Eyewitness accounts say the police and fire brigade did nothing, not even bothering to check if there were people trapped inside. The barbaric revenge killings and the alleged complicity of local authorities sent shock waves through the system, prompting the Calcutta High Court to trash the state Special Investigation Team’s efforts and order a CBI enquiry.
The number of dead has since gone up to nine (six women, a child and a man); Nazima Biwi, who suffered 60 per cent burns, passed away on March 28, but not before she gave her statement to the CBI. The central agency has found several discrepancies between the FIR filed by the local police and the people’s version of the events.
In all three cases, the role of the police is under the scanner: either for direct involvement as had happened in the murder of student leader Anis Khan, who was thrown off his terrace during a raid on the night of February 18, or complicity, as in the case of Tapan Kandu, Congress councillor of Jhalda municipality in Purulia, who
was shot dead apparently because he refused to join the TMC and help the latter form the board in the municipality. Audio clips, allegedly of local station in-charge Sanjib Ghosh, are doing the rounds, implicating the police.
It was the carnage on March 28, though, that put the state back in the national headlines, and for all the wrong reasons. It also gave the opposition BJP another opportunity to raise the ‘anarchy and lawlessness’ bogey, a pet excuse to clamour for presidential rule in Bengal (governor Jagdeep Dhankhar’s latest salvo on Twitter called the Birbhum incident an “arson orgy”).
Politics aside, the string of incidents of political violence, starting with the mayhem following the 2021 election results, throws open the big question of whether Mamata’s writ still runs in the state’s hinterland. The Bagtui incident appears to be retaliation for the murder of the powerful deputy head of Barshol gram panchayat, Bhadu Sheikh, once again exposing the soft underbelly of the politician-criminal-police nexus.
Way back in 2012, Bhadu, sometime chicken transporter-turned-dakmaster (euphemism for extortionist) for the local police, started harbouring political ambitions and joined the Trinamool, which had just come to power. He soon got close to TMC district president and Birbhum strongman Anubrata Mondal and began using his muscle to ‘collect funds’ for the party. While Bhadu and his cohorts looked after resource mobilisation, another character, Anarul Hossain, who is now in jail as coaccused in the retaliatory killings, was in charge of party organisation.
The buzz is that Bhadu was reneging on money that was to be kicked back upstairs to the higher-ups. There’s also talk of a fallout with some of his aides, again over money. That said, who killed Bhadu and what led to the Bagtui incident are matters for investigation but why districts like Birbhum are fast turning into killing fields is not too difficult to guess.
The area is abundant in sand and stone (basalt stone and stone chips). “Illegal stone and sand mining supplies material to 85 per cent of the construction sites in the cities. It also fills the pockets of a long chain of conduits, from politicians to police to local level thugs. Earnings from some areas like, say, Nalhati, which has 11 illegal stone pits, is between Rs 70-90 lakh daily from one major arterial exit alone,” says a local transport operator on condition of anonymity.
The CBI’s entry, far from bringing a sense of relief, has muddled the situation further. A 35-member team is camping at Tarapith in Rampurhat now. Along with the CBI, the state BJP unit is also now active in the area. A fivemember fact-finding mission has done the rounds, as has a team of state MLAs.
The Trinamool is already crying vendetta. Mamata is talking of a larger central conspiracy to malign the image of the state. Party spokesperson Kunal Ghosh points to how the CM has fulfilled her rajdharma by arresting 22 people, including Anarul. “The chief minister has brought to book all those who were negligent in their duties. She has taken action against the police and even the TMC block president. The way the BJP and CBI are acting in Rampurhat, it’s as if they are working in tandem. If our leaders are intercepted on purpose, we will take to the streets,” Ghosh warned.
Mamata too echoed the street battle chorus; it is likely to be the party strategy to take on the Centre if the CBI “intentionally” closes in on party leaders. The CM has already written a letter on March 29 to various leaders of the opposition camp, asking that they come together urgently against the BJP and its use of central agencies to ‘harass political opponents’.
The Centre would do well not to overplay its hand now, give any cause for Mamata to play out her “vendetta politics” card. Getting Mamata out on the streets, her favourite battleground, could turn up the heat even in capital Delhi, in what is already looking like a long hot summer. ■
THE BIRBHUM CARNAGE OPENS UP THE QUESTION OF WHETHER MAMATA’S WRIT STILL RUNS IN THE HINTERLAND