Bengal cops seen in a district, once a Maoist hotbed.
Almost a decade after Maoist presence shrunk from the tribal-dominated Jangalmahal district of West Bengal after three years of upheaval, police are probing possible movement of the left wing extremists (LWE) and reports of them making a comeback in the area, once a hotbed.
Director General of West Bengal Police Virendra held a high-level meeting with several other top police officers on Saturday at Jhargram, 150 km from Kolkata. "We have discussed the LWE situation at the meeting," he told reporters.
The officers later visited the Dhangikusum area in Belpahari in the Jhargram district to probe a possible point of entry of the Maoists into Bengal from neighbouring Jharkhand.
On Thursday, four youth from West Midnapore district, who had gone to a waterfall at the same spot, which is something of a tourist draw, reported to police that seven armed Maoists had seized their mobile phones.
On Friday, Maoist posters were found at Sinduria village also in the Belpahari police station area ordering a contractor to stop building a local road. "Sourav Roy, stop road construction," the posters written in red ink said. Beneath that was scrawled the words CPI Maoist.
The police is probing the 'thekadar' posters and has dismissed the report about Maoists seizing phones from the tourists. The Jhargram Superintendent of Police said one of the four tourists had lost a mobile; however, perhaps due to family pressure over the loss of the phone, claimed Maoists had taken it away.
But these incidents in quick succession are just two of four suspected Maoist related incidents in Jhargram district in the last four weeks or so.
On 27 August, a house at Ponchapani village in the Belpahari police station was fired upon by unknown persons. The occupant of the house, a gas cylinder dealer, told police they may have been Maoists who had sent him an extortion note for Rs 2 lakh in July.
Two other contractors or shop-owners in the village had received similar notes. Sources say police are probing the Madan Mahato squad of CPI Maoists which is suspected to be camping in forests at the Jharkhand Bengal border.
On August 15, about 20 Maoist posters were found at Bhulabheda market in Belpahari that saaid 'Independence Day should be observed as a black day'. A woman Maoist leader reportedly visited the village the day before and told locals to keep their phones switched off during her visit.
These reports are also being probed and the possibility that some unscrupulous elements are using the CPI Maoist poster threat for extortion. But with the Director General of Police visiting the district, clearly antennas are up about the possible resurgence of red terror.
Maoists had surfaced in West Midnapore district of which Jhargram was a part in the middle of 2008. In November that year, then Chief Minister and CPM leader Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee's convoy was hit by a landmine planted by Maoists at Salboni.
At least three districts - West Midnapore, Bankura and Purulia which is a tribal belt loosely called Jangalmahal - were hit by red terror. The Lalgarh subdivision now in Jhargram district that was recently carved out of West Midnapore, turned into a no man's land taken over by the LWE who killed dozens of people. It took a huge CRPF presence to reassert control in about two years.
The Maoist terror was one of many factors that effected a change in government in Bengal in May 2011 with Mamata Banerjee displacing CPM chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya. The Maoist movement effectively ended after M Koteshwar Rao better known as Kishenji, the CPI Maoist leader who spearheading the movement there, was killed in an encounter on 24 November 2011.