TMC Leaders Concede Rampurhat Incident Has Put Party on the Backfoot

Kolkata: Perhaps for the first time in the 11 year-regime of Trinamool Congress, a section of Imams who function under the banner of Bengal Imams Association and Welfare Trust (BIA) have targeted TMC supremo and chief minister Mamata Banerjee quoting from her campaigns for the 2021 Assembly elections and suggesting that she cannot disown responsibility for the tragedy at Bogtui village in the outskirts of sub-divisional town Rampurhat in Birbhum district.

NewsClick's interaction with several Muslims indicated that several of their community members having been charred to death by miscreants would weigh heavily on their minds as they prepare themselves to observe Ramzan, which begins on April 2 and involves, among other things, month-long fasting.

Also, perhaps for the first time, TMC leaders concede in private discussions that after Bogtui the party finds itself on the backfoot and the carnage has been proving hugely embarrassing for the party chief and chief minister.

And certainly, Bogtui has given a chance to people to vent their anger against TMC Birbhum district chief Anubrata Mondol, who is known for making highly provocative statements against Opposition party leaders and even the police. Mondol, who is facing investigations on several counts and is suspected of having amassed wealth by means far from fair, has been relentlessly pursuing with considerable success his mission of ‘Opposition-Mukt Birbhum’. Today, if people identify him as a culprit and demand his arrest, it is simply because Mamata unceasingly gives him quarters.

Once while defending him, she advanced a weird argument that Anubrata behaved the way he did because of the inadequacy of oxygen in his head ‘office’. At last, there are some indications that the party may be trying to distance itself from him. TMC's spokesman at a news conference on high court ordered CBI inquiry refused to answer a question on Mondol, saying “he is a big politician, he understands too much.”

A BRIEF RECOUNT OF WHAT HAPPENED AT BOGTUI

On Monday, March 21, at around 8:30 pm, TMC leader and deputy chief of party-ruled panchayat Bhadu Sheikh was bombed to death; an hour later, there were indiscriminate bombings in the area and four houses were set ablaze in what is suspected to be a retaliatory action after Bhadu’s killing and in which at least eight persons including six women and one child were charred to death; those charred to death included the mother, wife and daughter of one Mihilal Sheikh and a newlywed couple; most of them were related to each other; at around 3:30 am on Tuesday, March 22 seven dead bodies were recovered from the house of one Sona Shiekh, who is known to be having business connections with Bhadu and who used to get a share from the spoils of illegal transactions in sand trade, stone chip transport and coal smuggling. From 11:30 am onwards, the village came under the control of the police. Mamata's trusted aide Firhad Hakim, Rampurhat MLA Ashis Bandopadhyay and other TMC leaders, including Mondol arrived on the scene in the afternoon. Here it bears mention that Mondol tried to sell the theory that a TV burst could have caused the blaze.

The other influential TMC leader, who was a contractor “often successfully competing for jobs” in the local panchayat samiti and whose arrest was ordered by the chief minister when she visited the village on March 24, is Anarul Hossain, against whom frightened people around complained that he did not respond to their SOS for calling the police (Anarul was arrested within three hours from a hotel at Tarapeeth, a well-known pilgrimage in the district).

Bhadu and Anarul are apt examples of the rags-to-riches story; both thrived on unregulated, unofficial transactions aided, as it were, by TMC leaders’ patronage and ever willing police. In a sense, this also points to the ground realities in large parts of rural Bengal. An extract from the coverage in The Indian Express edition of March 25 conveys a lot. Bhadu's wife Tabila told the Indian Express: "What my husband did, and whatever he has earned, he has shared with everybody, including our co-workers. Monthly Rs 20,000-40,000 were given to people like Sona Sheikh, Palash Sheikh, and others with my husband for years. He did a lot for the party too. But, look how Sona and others repaid him. They were jealous that my husband became up-pradhan and earned good money ....."

When approached for comments, West Bengal’s ex-chief secretary Ardhendu Sen told NewsClick from Gurugram: “It's a sad commentary on the state of law and order. At the root is the unrestrained greed for money.” Asked if he thought it was a glaring instance of administrative and political failure, Sen said there was an administrative failure. Asked about the demand for high court monitoring the CBI probe, he said: “With people not having much confidence in CBI, this the best chance for a high court-monitored investigation. When asked whether Bogtui might dent TMC's Muslim support base, he responded, “I do not know”.

Surajit C Mukhopadhyay, who teaches sociology at Amity University at Raipur in Chhattisgarh and who has had a long inning in the profession in Bengal, sees Bogtui as an instance of gang fight; maybe without face-to-face confrontation, for a share of the spoils of undesirable activity.

“There is hardly any economic development. The precariousness of existence is writ large, and in that situation, we see some examples of sprouts in the earth – some people achieving conspicuous affluence through muscle and money power – the latter by unscrupulous means and nexus; well, you know with whom. Over a period, they become the eyesore of those majority forced to a precarious existence. They have nothing to fall back upon, and they have nothing to look forward to; the result is rivalry, gang fight,” Mukhopadhyay told NewsClick from Raipur.

Civil society outfit Swaraj India and Jai Kisan Andolan have demanded that the CBI investigation be high court-monitored, so people feel confident that it will be an unbiased exercise. Otherwise, there will be every chance of a BJP-TMC deal to suppress the truth and perpetrators of the crime will go scot-free, key office-bearers of the two organisations, Avik Saha contended.

BIA chairman Mohammed Yahiya has argued that while campaigning for the Assembly elections in March-April 2021, the chief minister repeated told voters to treat her as the TMC candidate for each of the 294 seats and exercise their right to franchise in favour of TMC. By this logic, she is also the MLA for the Rampurhat Assembly constituency and, therefore, she must take full responsibility for the barbaric incident at Bogtui village on the outskirts of the sub-divisional town of Rampurhat, which according to the 2011 census, is the third most populous town of Birbhum district (TMC had won the seat).

When Sen's attention was drawn to the BIA chief's contention, he said while campaigning in Jungle Mahal, the chief minister made this kind of plea but with a slight difference – "My party people might have committed some wrongs, but you should vote for me taking me as the candidate.”

Yahiya has made two more points: first, Mondol, her party's district chief “must be arrested”. Secondly, BIA has strongly protested Mamata’s decision to field Babul Supriyo (BS), who left the Bharatiya Janata Party and joined TMC some weeks back for the bye-election in the Ballygunge Assembly constituency. BS had won the Asansol Lok Sabha seat in 2014 and 2019. During his first term, the 16-year-old son Sibghatullah of local Noorani mosque’s Imam Maulana Imdadul Rashidi lost his life in the violence that the town saw on the occasion of Ram Navami in 2018.

“This incident is still fresh in the minds of local people, and no secular party could think of fielding BS in any election”: the BIA chief made these remarks in a video message. When asked by NewsClick whether he stood by what he had said, his posture was: "Have I said anything wrong?"

Maulana Shafique Qasmi, Imam of Kolkata’s largest and principal mosque, Nakhoda Masjid, was not forthcoming when asked by NewsClick whether he preferred the CBI investigation being held under the watch of the Calcutta High Court, which had ordered the CBI probe. “We have to keep faith in whichever agency it is; we cannot go on doubting people. The important thing is to ensure an unbiased, impartial inquiry. CM did a good thing by visiting the tragic spot,” said Maulana Qasmi, the state president of All India Imam Muezzin and Social Welfare Organisation. He disclosed he has written to the chief minister on this issue, urging her to ensure peaceful conditions in the state.

The general secretary of the Murshidabad district unit of the same outfit Abdur Rajjak said Muslims had started preparing themselves to observe Ramzan, which starts on April 2. “We hope the occasion passes peacefully. There should be no repetition of Bogtui in future,” Rajjak told NewsClick.

The massacre evoked strong reactions when one M Islam, a guest at a TV channel programme, observed: "The chief minister has to answer; she always claims her police force is doing a very good job. Let her list those good jobs and if that be so, how could the carnage happen?”