Fear and resentment shroud Ground Zero of Bengal arson

Located around 300 km from Kolkata but within 150 metres of the bustling Rampurhat town in Bengal’s Birbhum district, Bogtui resembled a ghost village on Wednesday as many residents had fled after a massacre on Monday claimed eight lives, allegedly in retaliation to the killing of the deputy chief of the local Barshal village panchayat, Bhadu Sheikh, hours earlier.

“The victims were all women and at least two were small children,” said 65-year-old Kalu Sheikh, who lives in the western part of the village, commonly referred to as Paschimpara by locals.

The massacre started around 10.30pm on Monday, according to Sheikh and other villagers.

The natural demarcation between the two parts of Bogtui, which is inhabited by around 400 Muslim families, is an agricultural field.

“Of the five villages that come under Barshal panchayat, it is Paschimpara that was notorious for violence for more than 10 years,” said Sheikh, as he looked around the charred home of Fatik Sheikh where seven bodies were recovered by fire brigade personnel on Tuesday morning.

Some chickens were feeding on corn strewn around the backyard of Fatik Sheikh’s home. His cow and her calf were still tied to a post. All adjacent houses were locked with no one closeby.

The Calcutta high court on Wednesday sought a report from the West Bengal government on the Birbhum violence by 2 pm on Thursday, while the state told the court that at least 20 people were arrested so far.

Taking up a suo motu petition and a set of public interest litigations seeking an independent probe into the matter, a division bench headed by chief justice Prakash Shrivastava ordered immediate installation of CCTVs in Bogtui, covering all angles of the crime scene in the presence of district judge Purba Bardhaman.

The bench, also comprising justice R Bharadwaj, directed the state police chief to ensure safety of all witnesses, including that of a minor who was injured in the violence.

Opposing the pleas for a probe by an independent body, state’s counsel and advocate general S N Mookherjee said a special investigation team was already looking into the matter. “I am ashamed as a citizen of the state that such a thing has happened,” he said.

Additional solicitor general Y J Dastur, representing the CBI, said the agency was ready to conduct a probe if the court permitted.

At Bogtui, some villagers claimed Fatik Sheikh’s body was recovered from a paddy field on Wednesday morning – a claim policemen deployed at the village dismissed as rumour.

On the other side of the village road, stood the heavily damaged two-storey home of Sanju Sheikh, where three people, who sustained severe burn injuries, were rescued. One of them died in hospital.

Police did not disclose the identity of the victims till Wednesday.

“It may surprise you but the enmity between the families of Bhadu Sheikh, Sanju Sheikh and Fatik Sheikh and the close and distant relatives of these three families, started more than 10 years ago. They once fought over one family’s goat eating crop in a field owned by another. At least 10 people were killed over these 10 years. In January last year, Bhadu’s elder brother Babar was gunned down,” said Kajal Sheikh, another aged resident of the Paschimpara.

“The principal reason behind this rivalry is that Sanju Sheikh and Fatik Sheikh are not original residents of Bogtui. They belong to Morgram village located around 50 km from Rampurhat and settled here after marrying local women,” said Kajal Sheikh.

Villagers said the “outsiders” triggered friction over resource guarding – and land is considered the most prime object, precipitating the enmity into violence. “This happened despite the families owing their allegiance to the Trinamool Congress (TMC) which is now being targeted by the opposition parties,” said Kajal Sheikh.

“The disputes intensified when the other families tried to dig into Bhadu’s share of profit from the flourishing trade in sand from river beds and stones from local quarries,” he added.

Shortly after Bhadu Sheikh was murdered around 8.30 pm on Monday, at least eight houses were set ablaze by his supporters and relatives, said eyewitnesses who did not wish to be identified.

This was the first massacre in the TMC regime since the party came to power 2011.

Bogtui is now the site of sudden activity -- on Wednesday afternoon, the leader of the opposition in the Bengal assembly, Suvendu Adhikari, arrived at the village with a host of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) legislators.

“This barbaric crime calls for nothing less than President’s rule,” Adhikari thundered in front of journalists and television cameramen.

The TMC said chief minister Mamata Banerjee will visit on Thursday afternoon.

District superintendent of police Nagendra Nath Tripathi did not take calls from HT.

(With inputs from HTC in Kolkata)