Whistleblowers jailed in Birbhum

In an apparent travesty of justice, a group of villagers who had called the police after discovering buckets full of explosives in a Trinamool Congress party office at Sattor village in Birbhum district were sent to jail for two weeks.Among those who were sent to judicial custody was a woman supporter of the BJP who was subjected to inhuman torture by a group of Trinamool goons and four police men — including an officer — a few months ago after they abducted her in the midnight.

“I was caught and jailed because I had refused to give in and the four policemen are under suspension in the wake of my complaint,” said the BJP woman.

Several people lost their lives in the past one year in Birbhum which had been a centrestage of severe turf war between the Trinamool and the BJP. The BJP activists and the villagers were booked under Sections 143, 186, 506, 353 of the IPC, police said.

“It is clear that the Trinamool has transformed the police into toothless wonder. They hide under the table when attacked by the ruling party goons and frame the innocent if they protest against the hooliganism of the Trinamool workers,” said CPI(M) leader Sujan Chakrabarty.The villagers literally had forced the police to seize about 50 bombs stockpiled in a Trinamool party office. “Their complicity was proved when we found them doing nothing for ten hours even after being informed by the villagers” said a local adding “instead of seizing the bombs they waited for magistrates order.”

Finally when the villagers blockaded the highway the police was forced to act but while doing so they arrested the informants and framed them under false charges, locals alleged.In an unrelated but similar incident a defamation case was slapped against the sister of a whistleblower Barun Biswas who was murdered by alleged Trinamool goons three years ago after he tried to organize locals against ruling party backed criminals who were involved in a series of gang rapes in North 24 Parganas.