About 2,000 people fled from their homes in Nandigram since Tuesday to escape an offensive launched by CPI-M activists from the adjoining base of Khejuri to regain control of their lost ground.“Four villagers have been killed since Tuesday. There is a report of one more death but the same is unofficial,” West Bengal Home Secretary Prasad Ranjan Roy said.Roy virtually rebelled against the CPI-M’s official stand and gave his own version of the situation in Nandigram. CPI-M state secretary Biman Bose was quick to retort that the home secretary was not aware of the full facts in Nandigram.
“About 2,000 people, largely Bhumi Uchched Pratirodh Committee (BUPC) supporters, are homeless. The CPI-M has gained ground in Maheshpur and adjoining areas of Nandigram. Many CPI-M supporters have returned home,” Roy said.“Nandigram has turned into a war zone. We are trying our best to control the situation,” he had said a day before.Earlier, East Midnapore Superintendent of Police S.S. Panda told IANS that besides the four deaths about 10 people were injured in the violence since Tuesday, including a woman and a policeman.
CPI-M supporters Tuesday torched house after house in Nandigram, about 150 km from Kolkata, as they advanced from adjoining Khejuri to regain control as villagers fled for their lives, carrying whatever they could, reports from area said. Some 200 CPI-M men from Khejuri armed with long-range rifles, single-barrel guns, pipe guns and bombs Tuesday crossed the Talpatti canal at Bahargunj and attacked Satengabari, Brindabanchowk, Jambari, Girirbazar, Keyakhali, Simulkunda, Saifullachowk and Raynagar villages of Nandigram.“It is a planned attack. The CPI-M has assembled its armed supporters to mount the attack with the backing of the Eastern Frontier Rifles (EFR) and crush the opposition,” said West Bengal Public Works Department Minister Kshiti Goswami who belongs to the Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP), an ally of the CPI-M in the government.According to one report, 30-year-old Manasi Das, in an advanced stage of pregnancy, was holding on to her four-year-old daughter Shiuli when two bullets pierced her thighs Tuesday. She hasn’t seen her daughter since.