Sandeshkhali can turn into another Nandigram if TMC does not act against erring leaders

An elderly teacher, Keshabchandra Baidya, was surrounded at his home by a gang of local toughs. A pistol was ominously placed on a table in the cramped house. The leader of the gang wanted the elderly man to sell his plot of land at a throwaway price. The old man was threatened with dire consequences if he failed to oblige.

Baidya is not the only victim of the gang that was involved in forcefully capturing swathes of land by intimidating local villagers.

The land grab was just one aspect of their crimes. Even women were often targeted. At midnight, local women were called to their “office or farms for meeting.”

These blood-curdling tales of terror akin to a script of any Bollywood crime movie have surfaced from a West Bengal village just about 70 kms from Kolkata.

TMC leaders main accused

The main accused are the three local leaders of the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC), who turned the village Sandeshkhali into their private fiefdom.

The villagers, particularly the women folk, who had finally decided “enough is enough'' and rose in protest against the atrocities identified the troika as TMC strongman Shajahan Sheikh and his two close aides Uttam Sardar and Shibu Hazra.

Sheikh, also called “Bhai”, is the president of the Sandeshkhali TMC unit. Sardar was a member of the zilla parishad and a zonal president of the TMC in Sandeshkhali. He was suspended by the party for six years following the mass uprising and has since been arrested. Hazra is the TMC’s Sandeshkhali Block II president.

Sheikh and Hazra are still absconding.

ED officials attacked

Sandeshkhali’s first exposure to ignominy in the recent past was on January 5 when a team from the Enforcement Directorate (ED) went to the village to raid the residence of Shajahan Sheikh in a multi-crore ration distribution scam. Sheikh’s men attacked the ED officials and prevented them from entering his home. After the incident, Sheikh went underground to evade arrest.

The absence of Sheikh gave courage to the locals to open up about the atrocities they had been allegedly facing for years.

Host of complaints

Local women deposing before a West Bengal Police probe team and the National Commission for Women (NCW) that visited Sandeshkhali separately complained of land grabs, physical assault, harassment, non-payment of dues, molestation, and intimidation by the TMC leaders. There was, however, no complaint of rape.

“Our inquiry committee found that the victims in West Bengal are being threatened by the local police, deterring them from coming out and reporting instances of sexual and physical harassment,” the NCW claimed in its X handle.

West Bengal Governor CV Ananda Bose, who visited the village in the North 24 Parganas district to assess the ground situation on Monday (February 12), conveyed in his report to the Union Home Ministry that the law enforcers were hand-in-glove with the Sandeshkhali accused, sources said.

The Calcutta High Court also took suo motu cognisance of allegations of sexual assault on women “at gunpoint” and the transfer of tribal land at Sandeshkhali.

Opposition calls it ‘reign of terror’

The opposition parties BJP, Congress, and the CPI(M)-led Left Front naturally seized the opportunity to cite the Sandeshkhali incident as a glaring example of the “reign of terror” unleashed by TMC strongmen in rural Bengal.

The BJP even went a step further to give a communal colour to the incidents, deliberately ignoring the fact that two of the three main accused are Hindus.

A six-member BJP committee comprising union ministers and MPs will be visiting Sandeshkhali on Friday (February 16) to collect information about the alleged incidents of sexual harassment and violence against women. The committee will submit its report to the BJP national president JP Nadda.

TMC downplays incident

Faced with a political storm and public unrest, the ruling TMC tried to downplay the incident, accusing the opposition of fomenting trouble.

Among the 17 people arrested so far are the BJP observer for Basirhat Lok Sabha constituency Vikas Singh and CPI(M) leader and former MLA Nirapada Sardar.

Apart from the police probe, the TMC started an internal inquiry into allegations against the party leaders. The party has also scheduled a public meeting in Sandeshkhali on February 18 as a confidence-building measure. The party’s top leaders are likely to attend the meeting.

“Some people may have some resentment against our government. We will definitely look into any issue that will be reported. No one involved in any wrongdoing will be spared,” Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee told the state assembly on Thursday (February 15).

She, however, in the same breath accused the RSS-BJP of fomenting trouble in the area, virtually giving a clean chit to her party leaders.

The TMC may try to downplay the incident in public, but the protests by women in Sandeshkhali over the week has a serious implication for the party. It has led to the consolidation of opposition forces against the TMC on the ground.

Allegations of private fiefdoms

Moreover, this is not the first time that allegations of TMC leaders running private fiefdoms in rural Bengal have surfaced. In March 2022, eight people were burnt alive in a violent turf war between two TMC factions who were competing with each other over the share of spoils of illegal sand and stone mining and extortion money.

“There are many such Sandeshkhalis across Bengal which are yet to come to light. We only came to know about the horror of Sandeshkhali because of the mass uprising, or else the atrocities would have continued unnoticed as it has been happening elsewhere in the state,” claimed state Congress chief Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury.

Instead of hushing up the complaints of wrongdoings or making light of the allegations by blaming the opposition, it is high time the TMC takes action against its erring leaders, or else Sandeshkhali can snowball into another Nandigram.