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Anarul Hossain, the Trinamool Congress (TMC) community block unit president arrested for the March 21 massacre in Bengal’s Birbhum district, was not removed from his post last year due to a written request from the party’s veteran legislator from Rampurhat and former minister Asish Banerjee, the local leadership said on Thursday.
Banerjee, 70, a former lecturer at Rampurhat College who won the assembly seat for the fifth time last year and is now the deputy speaker of the Bengal legislative assembly claimed it was an organizational decision he took at a meeting in June.
Bogtui village in Birbhum’s Rampurhat sub-division drew the nation’s attention when eight people were burnt to death on the night of March 21 in retaliation to the murder of Bhadu Sheikh, the deputy head of the TMC-controlled Barshal gram panchayat, earlier that evening. The death toll rose to nine when an injured woman died on Monday. Six of the victims were women and two were children.
After Sheikh was murdered around 8.30 pm on March 21, Hossain claimed to have asked TMC workers to remain calm and not to indulge in any act of reprisal.
Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee visited Bogtui on March 24 and said in public that Hossain must be arrested because he did not inform the police when the villagers were attacked.
Hossain, 61, was arrested by a special investigation team (SIT) of the state police on March 25, hours after the Calcutta high court ordered a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe into the massacre. He has been interrogated several times by the CBI.
Claiming that he surrendered under instructions from the chief minister, Hossain has alleged that he is being framed.
A month after the TMC won the Bengal assembly polls with an absolute majority in 2021, a proposal to replace Hossain, the Rampurhat-1 community block president, was raised at an organisational meeting held at Rampurhat in June.
Anubrata Mondal, the TMC Birbhum district unit president and a trusted aide of the chief minister, said, “I wanted to replace Anarul Hossain but Asish Banerjee wanted him to continue.”
Although the TMC won 10 of the 11 assembly seats in Birbhum, including Rampurhat, Mondal said Hossain’s performance was not satisfactory.
“There were complaints against Anarul as well. But I allowed him to continue because the request came from a veteran leader like Asish Banerjee. As the local MLA, he wanted Anarul to stay till the panchayat polls in 2023,” said Mondal.
Mondal said Asish Banerjee also wrote a note to him.
Written on a sheet of paper, the note, which HT saw, addressed Mondal as “Dear friend.”
“I would earnestly request you to kindly consider the name of Anarul Hossain for not changing the post of president up to (the) ensuing panchayat elections,” said the note the MLA wrote on June 10, 2021.
Significantly, Bhadu Sheikh, whose elder brother Babar Sheikh was murdered at Bogtui village in January 2021, also approached the district police in June with a request for security cover.
“Bhadu Sheikh was afraid that he would be killed too. He wrote a letter to the inspector-in-charge of Rampurhat police station, Tridib Pramanik, in June last year. The letter was forwarded to the sub-divisional police officer Sayan Ahmed. The police, however, did not provide any security personnel,” said a senior TMC leader from the district.
Both Pramanik and Ahmed were removed from duty on the orders of the chief minister for failing to reach Bogtui on time on March 21. They are being regularly questioned by the CBI
Though the probe into the massacre is being conducted by the CBI, Hossain has been shown as the main conspirator by the state police.
When produced before the Rampurhat sub-divisional court on March 25, charges of murder, arson, rioting with deadly weapons, criminal conspiracies etc. were brought again Hossain.
The government told the court that Hossain was named by the people arrested as suspects. He was remanded in police custody for 14 days.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which won only the Dubrajpur seat in Birbhum, said Asish Banerjee’s letter in favour of Hossain has proved that factionalism in the TMC led to the massacre.
“It is a fight between two factions of the TMC. Ordinary villagers paid the price,” said Bengal’s BJP’s chief spokesperson Samik Bhattacharya.
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