Qutubuddin Ansari of Gujarat was the face that shook the world during the pogrom in Narendra Modi"s Gujarat...Today hundreds of such Ansaris are pleading for justice in Nandigram in Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee"s West Bengal....The irony cannot be missed for it was Kolkata that gave shelter to that hapless man...

Hundreds of men known to harbour anti-CPM sentiments have been abducted,others killed,yet others beaten mercilessly in the follow-up to the panchayat elections in Bengal...the atrocities do not stop there,women and children too have been targeted..beaten up into silence..

About ten days back a young woman was thrashed and beaten up,then stripped naked and chased by a mob furious with her for daring to speak out against the organised mayhem....

 It is extremely difficult to get anyone to speak out against the violence unleashed in Nandigram by a party that ironically in its state capital,Kolkata,claims to be a party of intellectuals,therefore beings of a higher order!!Such leaders however look the other way when hungry blood-thirsty wolves fed by it go on a rampage marauding innocent villagers...

Victims are suffering silently,afraid to give out their names or be photographed for fear of reprisal...

A 32 year old woman sobs out,"we have not gone out to vote for we have been threatened with widowhood if we did so."Lathi-weilding and gun-toting CPM cadres visited the women with white dhotis and cowered them into silence,saying they would have to wear the white cloth all their lives if their men cast their votes...

One young boy however blurted out his name in his desperation to locate his father and cried out,"Please help me find my father..CPM cadres have kidnapped him..."

Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and indeed the city of Kolkata gave shelter to a victim of the Gujarat riots when his fellow men turned against him..All Calcuttans then held their heads high,proud of their leader,proud of the city they belonged to...Today,however,this very man sitting in Kolkata fails to protect his own citizens from the men his party gives shelter to...he mouths inanities and untruths like "Nandigram is peaceful" and breaks into a rage if anyone dares differ with him...

This is the man whose heart bled when Gujarat bled....today when a tragedy of gigantic proportions is being played out in his own backyard,he takes cover in the cloak of lies and falsehoods.

Who will give shelter to the men,women and children of Nandigram,cry out the nameless,terror-stricken villagers...!!

Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee,we now know was only indulging in age old politics and public relations during the carnage in Gujarat..that facade of humanity was just that,a sham....as he is playing politics with Nandigram now.....

Today it is Nandigram,Mr.Buddhadeb,tomorrow it could be some other place,some other issue...is it time for us to leave Bengal,Mr.Chief Minister...??

This is what a senior police inspector posted in Nandigram had to say...."Cases of kidnapping and atrocities are the order of the day.Nandigram at present stands for atrocities of the worst kind..this place is a country by itself,ruled by power-crazy monsters.Only those who abide by the rules put forth by the "leaders" are allowed to "live".The rest are simply left to rot..My head hangs in shame to think that I work for the State Government Police....."

What could be a worse indictment of Buddhadeb's government and his administration..?

Mr.Chief Minister,will you wake up now at least??Hark back to your younger days..perhaps you might hear the faint stirrings of that long dead conscience...




Pict  : This boy defied the diktat of the CPM and approached the CRPF posted in Nandigram to help find his father,kidnapped by CPM goons..