A day after Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee launched a damage control exercise in Delhi over his government and party’s handling of the Nandigram issue, the ghost of the November carnage unleashed by the CPI(M) in Nandigram rose up to haunt him.
Five ghosts, to be precise. And more could follow.
On Wednesday, a patrol of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), the central force called in by Bhattacharjee himself to bring peace to the area, stumbled upon a makeshift grave under a pile of wood ash.
Five charred and decomposed bodies could be seen sticking out, and are expected to be dug out on Thursday. The sub-divisional officer has given permission to the police to dig up the area and take out the bodies for identification and further inquiry.
The find promptly sparked a battle over the bodies between the CPI(M) and the Trinamool Congress, which had backed the Bhoomi Uchched Protirodh Committee (BUPC) in its fight against the government and CPI(M) over land acquisition.
The CRPF stumbled on the grave early on Wednesday, at Boratala on Khejuri side, an area just outside Nandigram I which had become the base of CPI(M) supporters and cadres for 11 months since their eviction in January. The attack on Nandigram by armed CPI(M) cadres in the first half of November had been launched from Khejuri.
Sisir Adhikari, the Trinamool legislator who had been leading the anti-acquisition movement in the area, said the bodies were of Trinamool supporters butchered by the CPI(M) cadres when they finally recaptured Nandigram.
“We have been saying all along that 35 of our supporters have been missing since then, and we fear that these are the bodies of some of them,” said Adhikari, whose son Subhendu Adhikari, also a legislator, has been another active leader of the movement.
The CPI(M) promptly latched on to the bodies. Shyamal Chakraborty, the state president of CITU, the CPI(M)’s labour wing, said the bodies were those of CPI(M) supporters who had died in a BUPC attack and cremated.
“These people were our supporters and we are confident that a proper investigation will back my view,” said Chakraborty, who has been handling the Nandigram issue on behalf of the party.
Chakraborty’s claim was echoed by the police chief of East Midnapore district.
“The CRPF has told us that they suspect five bodies are buried there. We have already done a primary investigation, which tells us that the bodies were those of the people killed in the bomb explosion on October 28,” said SS Panda, superintendent of police.
He claimed that the authorities had already done the post-mortem of these bodies earlier, and released them to the next of kin.
“But since there have been allegations, we shall investigate the matter and expect to learn something by tomorrow,” said Panda.
The bomb blast itself has become a contentious issue. The CPI(M) had claimed then that the people died in a landmine blast triggered by the BUPC supporters. The BUPC had retorted that CPI(M) supporters making bombs had been killed when something went wrong.