Satyajit Bandyopadhyay is considered to be the cop at the centre of the Nandigram ‘killings’ in 2007.
New Delhi: West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee earlier this week announced her decision to contest the upcoming Vidhan Sabha election in the state from the Nandigram seat in the Purba Medinipur district, calling Nandigram as her elder sister and a “lucky place” for the Trinamool Congress (TMC), but it is Mamata Banerjee’s party that has inducted retired IPS officer Satyajit Bandopadhyay whom she had accused of firing on innocent people of Nandigram into her party last year.
Satyajit Bandyopadhyay is considered to be the police officer who was at the centre of the Nandigram “killings” that took place in 2007 and had taken 14 lives, which catapulted Mamata Banerjee and her TMC to power in 2011 and ended the 34-year-old long Left rule in West Bengal.
On 14 March 2007, people from Nandigram were protesting against the land acquisition rules proposed in their villages by the then Left Front government, and on that very day, 14 people from the villages in Nandigram were killed due to police firing. At that point in time, Satyajit Bandyopadhyay was the senior most police officer in Nandigram who is believed to have been leading the police force that had entered into the protest and had open fired on the protesters. The CBI had also charge-sheeted Bandyopadhyay linking him to the Nandigram “killings”.
The CBI during its investigation into the police firing had indicted twelve top cops and officials of the West Bengal government who were allegedly involved in the police firing. The CBI had also recommended a major “penalty” against the then District Magistrate Anup Agarwal.
However, the CBI had claimed multiple times that the Mamata Banerjee government had not given clearances to the CBI for years to charge-sheet the police officers and on the other hand the Bengal government had offered plum positions to these police officers after the TMC came to power. Political observers from Bengal also say that Anup Agarwal, who had ordered for the firing in Nandigram, was promoted by the Mamata Banerjee government to become Secretary of different departments under the Bengal government.
Political observers also say that, even after retirement some of those police officers who were allegedly involved in the killing of 14 people from Nandigram, were even offered post retirement posts in the Bengal government by the Mamata Banerjee government. The Calcutta High Court had called the police firing at the protestors in Nandigram “unconstitutional” and had asked the then ruling Left Front government to disburse compensation to the deceased family, which the Left Front government had complied with, but had challenged the High Court order in the Supreme Court; however, the TMC had later withdrawn the appeal from the apex court.
Now, after 10 years, Mamata Banerjee’s decision to go and contest from Nandigram, some 140 km away from Kolkata, is being looked at as a “political gimmick” by political observers in Bengal. Biswanath Chakraborty, a political analyst from Bengal, told The Sunday Guardian, “Mamata Banerjee’s decision to contest from Nandigram is nothing but a morale-booster announcement which she has made for the party workers in Medinipur where they had somewhat become disheartened with the departure of Suvendu Adhikari and to give a larger message to her party cadre that the party is read to take up challenges. The battle of Nandigram would be a zero-sum game and the reason for that is that if Suvendu Adhikari decides to contest from Nandigram and loses, his political career is over and if Mamata Banerjee loses, her political career would be over.”
Suvendu Adhikari, who was one of the faces of the Nandigram movement, was till recently the sitting MLA from Nandigram and recently joined the BJP.