Chronicle of a witch-hunt

KOLKATA: “Naxalites? In West Bengal? You must be crazy.� A colleague dismissed my idea of doing a report on the growth of the Naxalite Peoples’ War in this state. “The PW is active in Andhra Pradesh and Bihar. But surely not in West Bengal,� another said. That was in mid-2001. The Chhoto Anguria incident had just happened. All other newspapers had been reporting about the clashes that took place between the CPM and Trinamul Congress.And none wrote about the Naxalites.
Politicians were equally dismissive. “We don’t have any Naxalite problem in our district,� a confident CPM Midnapore district secretary Dipak Sarkar had said. “The Naxalites are finished in this state for good,� CPM state secretary Anil Biswas told me. Nonetheless, the PW had taken this correspondent to one of their strongholds in Goaltore. In village after village, they had absolute control. The CPM and the Trinamul Congress had been reduced to non-entities. My report appeared two days later in this newspaper.
And then the administration swung into action. There were arrests, houses were demolished; women and children were beaten and men thrown behind bars. All the major newspapers began reporting incidents of torture inside police lock-ups. In the third week of June this year, four suspected top PW leaders were arrested from various parts of Kolkata, North 24-Parganas and West Midnapore.
My contacts in Kolkata told me that they were being brutally tortured by the police. One of them was being given electric shocks, I was told. I went to Midnapore. But the police would not allow me to meet any of them. I had activated my contacts in the district administration. And one of them finally managed to sneak me inside the lockup where the Naxalites were being detained.
A letter was handed over to me. It gave horrific details of how the Naxalite prisoners, even the women, were being subjected to severe torture. The report was published and all hell broke lose. The witch-hunt began. A top police official called me at the hotel in Midnapore. “How dare you enter the lock-up. Who are your sources? Do you know that we can arrest you?� he threatened.
I hurriedly left for Kolkata. Even here I was not safe. “You are sympathetic to the Naxalites,� CPM leaders began telling me. “Your phone is being tapped. Be careful when you talk,� a friendly police officer cautioned me. Often, the telephone would ring at 2 or 3 am, but no one would talk from the other end. “Stop writing about the Naxalites. Don’t you have any concern for your family?�