Kolkata: Eminent personalities, including
Magsaysay award winner Mahasweta Devi, on Saturday urged Union Home
Minister P Chidambaram to immediately stop anti-Maoist
operations in West Midnapore district.
"It is unfortunate to see that the government is offering
to talk to the Maoists on the one hand, and using police and
paramilitary forces to liquidate leaders of mass movement,"
they said in a letter to Chidambaram.
The government has sent out a signal that it would crush
all forms of dissent by killing mass leaders, the letter
alleged.
"Where you talk of bringing in development in tribal
areas, we hear footsteps of a police state. This two-faced
policy is sure to drown the country in a vicious circle of
violence."
They also condemned the killing of People's Committee
against Police Atrocities president Lalmohan Tudu and two
others at Kantapahari near Lalgarh on February 22.
The police version of the encounter in which the three
were killed was "lies", they alleged.
Demanding a judicial inquiry into Tudu's death, the
signatories claimed that evidence and eye witness accounts
indicated that Tudu was killed near his house.
Stating that Tudu at no time was accused of being an
"activist", they alleged "this clearly shows that the
government is implementing a deliberate policy of annihilating
the leaders of a mass movement of tribals."
Other signatories of the statement included Trinamool
Congress MP Kabir Suman, theatre personality Bibhas
Chakraborty, poet Joy Goswami, human right activist Sujato
Bhadra and Tarun Mondal, MP.
PTI
First Published: Saturday, March 06, 2010, 20:35