The government on Tuesday informed the Parliament that railway minister Mamata Banerjee attended the recently held rally in Lalgarh, West Bengal, in her capacity as Trinmul Congress chief and whatever she spoke there was not against the United Progressive Alliance’s policy.
Both the government and Ms Banerjee had come under severe criticism from the Opposition parties after the railway minister demanded a probe into the killing of a Maoist leader.
Opposition parties on Monday had severely criticised finance minister Pranab Mukherjee’s remark that he found “nothing wrong” in Ms Banerjee’s statement on the killing of Maoist leader Azad.
“Mamata Banerjee attended the Lalgarh rally in West Bengal on August 9 as chief of Trinamul Congress. Whatever she said there was not against the government’s policy,” parliamentary affairs minister Mr Pawan Kumar Bansal said in Rajya Sabha.
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Naxal killed by his own comrade
Rabindra Nath Choudhury
Raipur
A suspected Maoist was on Tuesday killed at Gornapalli in Chhattisgarh’s Bijapur district allegedly by his comrades for not being able to persuade his brother to join rebel cadres, the police said.
Police sources said Manglu Karma (22), a sangham — local unit of banned CPI(Maoist) — leader, had been asked by the other rebels to rope in his brother, Kodiyam (24), to join their cadres. However, Manglu was reportedly unwilling to have his brother to follow his footsteps and refused to bow down to the pressure by other sangham members to do so.
On Sunday, a group of militants abducted Kodiyam from his village of Gornapalli to force him to draft into their cadres. The tribal youth, however, managed to escape from their clutches the next day, which angered his captors even more.
The police said a group of armed militants stormed into Manglu’s house on Tuesday morning and attacked him with sharp weapons.