Unwarranted Censure!

COMMUNICATION

T.J.S. George’s vitriolic vitueeration against Mamata Banerjee as the Union Railway Minister (in his “Railways: Conspiring Against The People”, Mainstream, July 31, 2010), reflects his prejudice against her. He seems to be totally oblivious of the ugly ground realities of lethal toxicity created by the ruling CPI-M to cling on to power by means more foul than fair. The Indian Railways has route kilometre of over 65,000 km. It runs around 14,000 trains every day. It carries about 1.4 crore passengers daily. It employs 1.4 million persons. It has a fairly low “incidence of consequential accident per million train km of 0.75”. These few figures show the magnitude and dimension of the Railway universe in India.

Railway accidents in West Bengal have taken the character of an endemic swine flu. A railway accident is so programmed that it has to occur in the wee hours of the morning around 2 am and that too 48 hours before a major political event having an unnerving effect on the ruling CPI-M caucus in the State. The Jnaneshwari Express accident took place around 2 am on May 28, 2010 exactly 48 hours before the elections to 81 municipal bodies and Corporations including those in Kolkata and Bidhannagar (Salt Lake). The intention of who did it was clear: it was to defame and malign Mamata Banerjee. People are today quite conscious as to who did it and why.

There were five parties which could be involved in this act of sabotage: (i) the Maoists, (ii) the People’s Committee Against Police Atrocities (PCAPA), (iii) the Trinamul Congress, (iv) the Railway Board, (v) the ruling CPI-M party.

Causing harm to innocent members of the public was strictly prohibited by Mao Zedong. A casual reading of the Red Book would validate this statement. The Maoists would not have got any political advantage by killing 149 non-involved passengers in a night train. They had not done it before. Moreover, after any major subsersive action Maoists publicly admit their involvement and own up their responsibility. They do so not to follow any Biblical injunction to speak the truth but to boost the morale of their own cadre. In this case they denied any involvement. That denial is acceptable.

The People’s Committee is a highly amorphous assembly of heterogenous persons. It is incapable of organising such high-tech subversion. It has also been largely penetrated by CPI-M cadres.

The third party could be the Trinamul Congress itself. Members of the TMC are not known to have been afflicted by any death wish to carry out such a suicidal operation.

The same applies to the Railway Board.

Therefore, the needle of suspicion moves towards the CPI-M, according to whose political reading defaming Mamata would give them some calculated political advantage.

Forty minutes before the Jnaneshwari Express reached the place of occurrence, a fast Express train passed over the very same rail track without any problem. So the act of sabotage had to be completed within 30 to 35 minutes leaving a margin of five minutes to move away from the expected accident site. To cause any significant damage to the rails is a highly technical affair which would require a labour force of 20 to 25 persons. The GRP, being under the State Government, mounted guard while the technically skilled CPI-M activists and sympathisers among the lower rungs of the railway community speedily removed the rails. Undoubtedly there were masterminds who conceived the programme of slaughter and gave the go-ahead signal. The CBI has yet to identify and apprehend the Amit Shah(s) among the CPI-M. I would like to draw the attention of T.J.S. George to Dipak Kumar Ghosh’s write-up (“Jnaneshwari Express Sabotage and Mass Murder Case: Another Battle between the CBI and West Bengal CID”) that appeared in Mainstream (July 10, 2010). In that the author named the possible Amit Shahs among the CPI-M. It is to be hoped that the CBI would pursue the lead given by Dipak Kumar Ghosh, and get hold the masterminds.

Now let us come to the Sainthia accident. The time was the same, wee hours of the morning, that is, 2 am. The date was exactly two days before the huge gathering of TMC supporters and members to commemorate the 13 “shahids” (martyrs) who were killed by police firing on July 21, 1993. The reason was to malign and defame Mamata Banerjee 48 hours before the event so that it could have a harmful effect on the function. The result was just the opposite. Kolkata had never seen in its political history such a sea of humanity ever before. What Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi or Jayaprakash Narayan failed to achieve was achieved by Mamata. One newspaper belonging to the CPI-M group estimated the gathering to be 2.8 million. However, since the State CID is investigating the matter, nothing is expected to come out of the inquiry.

Confirmed criminals never change their mindset. From now to May 2011 when the general election to the State Assembly is due, we would witness a few more horrendous political crimes to be committed by the ruling clique. One can almost predict that it would culminate in a monstrous act of sabotage in the underground sector of the Kolkata Metro where the casualty would go up to 500-1000. And that too would happen 72 to 48 hours before the date of the general election in the Kolkata Metropolitan area. Criminals never change their signature nor their modus operandi.

We have to recognise that the CPI-M is no longer a political party. Since it abjured Marxism-socialism and embraced neoliberal economic reform, it has degenerated into a mafia organisation. Like the Mafiaso it exists only to remain in power to make money. The CPI-M stormtroopers did and would stoop to any depth of bestiality, barbarity, brustishness and cruelty to be in power. The earlier the organisation in its current form disappears from the political scene, the better would it be for Indian democracy.

GD-89 Sector-III
 Salt Lake, Kolkata-700106