PRAGOTI

 Another blog post on the Sardiha Rail tragedy and the hypocritical response by the Maoists.

More than a fortnight has passed since the horrific train accident near Sardiha in Midnapore district in West Bengal. Much of the finger pointing was done at the Maoists and their front organisations. A report by the Indian Express featured a confession (subsequently retracted) by an activist - Bapi Mahato belonging to the PCAPA and who has gone into hiding. Reports kept surfacing that the activist is being sought by the Maoists themselves as well, some suggesting that the Maoists were keen on bringing him to "summary justice" - usually executions carried out by a kangaroo court euphemistically named "Jan Adalats". But limelight on the issue faded away after the civic elections' results in the state, where the opportunist opposition emerged victorious. Smug from the victory, the lady of the moment is still basking in a fresh limelight showered by the media, as they anoint her "chief minister" in the waiting, even as the memories of the scores dead in the accident - a deliberate sabotage wrought by the PCAPA -an organisation that has thrived in the Trinamul protection to it - are still sore, atleast for those who haven't forgotten it in the expediency of the regime-change "euphoria" in the state. 

Hypocritically, a letter arrives from the Maoists' spokesperson (and published here) that states that the Maoists assure all citizens that attacks on railway property will hitherto be halted. Great service, one would say, but considering that the attacks on rail property have been part and parcel of Maoist praxis for so long, a simple one liner on "halting" does not absolve the gruesome crimes committed by this outfit. There is nothing revolutionary about cowardly blasts on rail property endangering lives of ordinary rail passengers or operators of goods' trains. That the Maoists have made an art of this - not to mention its reveling in the destruction of civic structure - all in the name of revolutionary struggle is shuddering to say the least. There was no apology to the scores of such acts of sabotage that the Indian Maoists and their front organisations have carried out on the Indian Railways' tracks and associated property. 

When armed gunmen - jihadis - carried out gruesome massacres in Mumbai on the 26th of November with one aim in hand - terrorise the Indian population, the entire nation reacted in horror. The public trial of Ajmal Kasab, the lone nabbed terrorist has kept the anger alive among the Indian citizenry. No less should be the anger with the deliberate sabotage of the Gyaneshwari Express that killed scores of sleepy Indian citizens. Public memory must not fade away the fact that this act of sabotage featured a violent organisation that has done scores of political murders and killings in the region and has almost got away with them with impunity because of the West Bengal opposition's apathy to the victims of the murders. 

No amount of loquacious "statements" and clarifications will be enough. The Maoists must be defeated in their clueless and violent politics. Nabbing the culprits, bringing them to justice are the only ways to stay true to the memories of those dead in the sabotage.