Contrary to the Mamata Banerjee government’s claims, it was local villagers and not “outsiders” who had clashed with the police in a Dubrajpur village on Tuesday morning.
The villagers themselves rejected the charge and warned that they would again resort to similar resistance to protect their land. “We the villagers had voluntarily put up resistance when the police arrived in large numbers to forcibly take away the (earth-moving) machine. There were no outsiders among us,” the president of Krishi Jamin Rakha Committee said on Thursday. The villagers also alleged that Trinamul Congress leaders, including district president Anubrata Mondal, had accompanied the police force during the pre-dawn operation.
Every day, new facts are emerging contradicting the state government’s claims about Dubrajpur violence.
Every day the government is tying itself in knots in trying to blame others for the Loba incident. State commerce and industries minister Partha Chatterjee, who had on Wednesday said that the CPI(M) and a section of the Congress had instigated the villagers to clash with the police, on Thursday found a new conspirator: the Maoists.
Ms Banerjee had on Wednesday claimed that the police operation was planned at the local level and senior police officers were not aware of it. Senior police officers, both at district and state level, were fully aware of it much in advance. Sources said it was Mr Chatterjee who had himself in September asked the then-superintendent of police (SP) of Birbhum Hrishikesh Meena to retrieve the earth-moving equipment. The machine which belonged to DVC Emta Coal Mines Ltd had been “seized” by the villagers in 2011 following a dispute with the company which had acquired land in the area for open-cast coal mining.