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| Railways avoid blaming PCPA for Rajdhani crisis |
| Rajat Roy / Kolkata Oct 30, 2009, 00:43 IST |
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The Railways might like to play down the Maoists’ role byfiling an FIR against “unknown persons” for holding up the Bhuvaneswar Rajdhani Express, heckling passengers and preventing staff from discharging their duties, the CRPF officials did not take it lightly.
Yesterday the CRPF lodged an FIR at Jhargram police station against the Maoists for holding up the train. Unlike the Railway officials, the CRPF officials in their FIR also mentioned the name of Asit Mahato as one of the kingpins of yesterday’s violence.
Asit Mahato is the younger brother of Chhatradhar Mahato and now heads the People’s Committee against Police Atrocities after his brother’s arrest. The train was held up by people under the banner of this committee which also demanded release of Chhatradhar. It has put the Centre in a piquant situation where two of its departments took disparate and contrary positions. However, the Railways’ version of the incident as recorded in their FIR goes with the current ambivalent position taken by the Minister of Railways and her party on the Maoists. So far, Mamata Banerjee has been avoiding directly criticizing the Maoists for their terrorist acts although she often reiterates her opposition to the politics of killing of individuals for which her party TMC has drawn flak from the ruling CPIM.
The CPIM leaders including their general secretary Prakash Karat have been alleging that there exists a link between the Maoists and the TMC, which has been vociferously denied by both the TMC and its ally Congress. While in the last two years the CPIM leaders and activists were increasingly under attack and a good number of them were killed by the Maoists, there was only one incident when a TMC leader was killed by the Maoists at Nandigram.
But today two TMC activists have been attacked and killed allegedly by the Maoists at Belpahari near Lalgarh, West Medinipur. Although according to preliminary reports, the killing bore all the marks of the Maoists handiwork, the police are still trying to ascertain the identity of the assailants.
If it confirms the preliminary findings, then the TMC will also soon join its political adversary CPIM in the firing line of the Maoists.
Last night after a brief exchange of fire with the CPIM cadres, the Maoists killed one of them in a village under Koltwali police station in the same district. There have been reports of abduction of three people from Goaltor, which is not far off from Lalgarh.
The police are clearly baffled by the growing activities of the Maoists and of the view that more than one armed squads are operating now in that area.
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