Lack of leadership turns Bengal tribal group to violence

KOLKATA - The People’s Committee Against Police Atrocities (PCAPA), a tribal group formed two years ago to protest police torture in West Bengal, seems to be engaging in mindless violence in the absence of proper leadership, say intelligence agencies.

Police and intelligence agencies say lack of strong ideological foundations and a tendency among the tribal youth - most of whom are jobless - to show crass heroism have led to the qualitative degeneration of the PCAPA.

The PCAPA was formed in November 2008, within days of a landmine explosion in West Midnapore district’s Salboni in which West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s convoy had a narrow escape.

The committee was formed to protest the police action that followed the blast.

However, the committee, with its base at Lalgarh, about 200 km from here, gradually became a front organisation of the Communist Party of India-Maoist (CPI-Maoist).

The leftwing rebels started using the PCAPA for propaganda, for launching mass protests among the tribals and for giving a benign face to their violent mode of operation.

But the arrest of the PCAPA’s moving force Chhatradhar Mahato last September, and the mysterious death of its president Lalmohan Tudu earlier this year led to the organisation undergoing a transformation.

After Mahato’s arrest, the committee set up its militia wing Sidhu Khanu Gano Militia and adopted a more militant path.

Activities of Maoists in the area have increased in the past eight months after the formation of the militia, said West Midnapore Superintendent of Police Manoj Verma.

“Starting with the torching of a sponge iron factory to ransacking the zoo in Jhargram, the organization carried out several attacks on government offices,” he said.

After the successful operations, the PCAPA was assigned more important and significant actions including holding hostage the Delhi-bound Rajdhani Express at Banstala, he said.

The organisation also regularly extorts money from teachers, businessmen, servicemen, truck drivers and industrialists.

A huge proportion of the extortion money is used for procuring arms and ammunition and paying local leaders, police said.

A report prepared by the research and development wing of the Special Task Force (STF) of the anti-Maoist operation in the leftwing extremism-affected districts in Bengal, also revealed that the organisational structure of the PCAPA is a virtual replica of the CPI-Maoist.

A senior police officer of West Midnapore district said the PCAPA is presently run by Santosh Patro, known to be the right hand man of the Maoist leader Koteshwar Rao alias Kishenji.

During Mahato’s tenure, Patro was the vice-president and never came to the forefront, the police officer said.

The residents of Dherua, Amjhor, Dharampur, Ghowmichowk, Bhulagora, Amlia, Boro Pelia, Choto Pelia, Narcha, Kantapahari, Modhupur, Kumar Bandh and Ramgarh villages, who once supported the PCAPA are now unhappy with its activities.

Chandi Charan Murmu of Kantapahari village said: “The forest department was the only source for generating employment in the area.”

“But over the past few months the activists looted government property after damaging the forest offices,” he said.

Recently, the resentment among a section of tribal people and the breakaway fraction of the Maoists resulted in formation of the Sendra Committee (an anti-Maoist panel).

A disgruntled guerrilla leader, Guru Charan Kisku alias Marshal, once known to be close to Kishenji, told IANS: “The Lalgarh movement is not a tribal movement as claimed by Kishenji.”

“The CPI-Maoist did nothing for the tribals and is in fact using them as instruments to spread their territory in Bengal. Kishenji and other second rank leaders are outsiders and did not know anything about tribals here,” he said.