The Bijon Setu Massacre: 16 monks and a nun of Ananda Marga were lynched to death and burnt alive in broad daylight in Kolkata ---- Soumya Ganguly
On the morning of April
30,1982, 16 monks and a nun of a Hindu organization were assassinated and
simultaneously set on fire at three different locations in broad daylight near
Ballygunge, Kolkata. They were pulled from their cabs that were supposed to
carry them to an educational conference at their headquarters in Tiljala,
Kolkata. Thousands of people witnessed the killings, which took place at three
different locations simultaneously. Despite this, not a single person has ever
been arrested. No immediate action was taken against the murderers by the
CPI(M) government of West Bengal at that time. It was only in 2012 that the
West Bengal government formed a single-member judicial commission was set to
investigate the murders.
The CPI(M) government
continued to withhold information about the lynchings in the months and years
that followed. Even though the National Human Rights Commission launched an
investigation into the situation in 1996, Jyoti Basu and his administration's
lack of cooperation prevented it from moving forward significantly at the time.
Two reminders had previously been sent by May 1999, yet the state government
still did not reply. Sher Singh, an IAS officer from West Bengal, had offered
to reveal the details of the case along with the relevent paperwork. When the
massacre took place, he just so happened to be the Additional District
Magistrate of 24 Paraganas. Singh claimed in his petition (CAT No. 1108 of
1994) that his suspension was the result of his refusal to follow the Communist
government's position on the issue. Singh explained to CAT that he was
constrained by the Official Secrets Act and could only divulge the secrets upon
being requested to do so by a competent authority. However, his petition
contained enough evidence to suggest that the Ananda Margis were killed as a
result of a land dispute with the Communists. The CPI(M)
feared that the Margis would upstage their domination in the Kasba belt which
was a communist bastion at the time.
At the time of the murders, Jyoti Basu was the chief minister in Bengal, and his police force was
accused of inaction. Faced with pressure, Basu formed the Deb Commission.
However, Ananda Margis had no faith in the Commission because Kanti Ganguly and other prominent CPI(M) leaders were
accused in this incident. On April 30, 1999, the Ananda Marga Pracharaka Samgha
(AMPS) demanded a high-level judicial inquiry into the Ananda Margis massacre,
headed by a sitting Supreme Court judge. On April 30, 2004, Ananda Marga was
able to organize its first demonstration. Commemoration of the massacre without
the need to first obtain a court order compelling the police to allow the
demonstration. After the Trinamool Congress came to power, the Amitabh Lala Commission
of Inquiry, a one-member judicial commission headed by former Calcutta High
Court judge Amitabh Lala, was set up in March 2012 after repeated appeals to
investigate the killings. formal legal studies.
According to commission sources, the documents state that important
leaders of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) from Kasba-Jadavpur area met
on February 6, 1982 at the Colony Bazar Picnic Garden to discuss the Ananda
Margis, whose headquarters was then coming up at a
difficult-to-access location in Tiljala. Former Left cabinet minister Kanti
Ganguly, Sachin Sen, former CPI(M) legislative member Nirmal Haldar, local
CPI(M) leader Amal Majumdar, former ward councilor reportedly attended the
meeting. 108 Tiljala-Kasba and Somnath Chatterjee, then Member of Parliament
for Jadavpur and later Lok Sabha Speaker. The Ananda Margs faced the wrath of
the communists when they were ideologically opposed to them and in the early
80s the CPI(M) was deeply skeptical of their activities. The first attack on
the Margins took place in 1967 at their world headquarters in Purulia, where
five of their members were allegedly killed by CPI(M) cadres. Two years later,
the Ananda Margan congregation in Cooch Behar was attacked. The CPI(M) believed
that the Marga's political goals and agenda were under the spiritual-religious
guise.
In April
1990, five Ananda Marga members were murdered by CPI(M) cadres in Purulia.
Regarding the 1982 massacre, Chief Minister Jyoti Basu said, "What can be
done? Such things happen."
There are others who might have suffered equally because they refused to
toe the communist line in the massacre. In April 2017, the Justice Amitava Lala
Commission visited the Behala home of Mamata Bhattacharya, wife of slain
Tiljala police station constable Gangadhar Bhattacharya, who was shot dead on
October 31, 1983, to record its piece. According to Mamata, her husband was an
honest officer and had to pay with his life because he did not support the
massacre of Ananda Marga monks. She said that she sought help from Jyoti Basu
and wanted to continue living in the Kidderpore police station assigned to her
husband, but was refused.
Every
year on April 30, the anniversary of the massacre, a procession is held at
Ananda Marg to remember and honour the monks who were brutally burned to death
in broad daylight. And yet, almost four decades have passed and justice has
still not been served. "Political power grows out of the barrel of a
gun," said Chairman Mao. And the communists of India lived to the maximum.
Over the years, they have managed to maintain political power by holding a gun
to the head of this opposition. Although they have been politically destroyed,
they have yet to experience justice.
Some unclear questions come
at the end: What sin did those 17 people commit that they had to pay for with
their lives? The CPI(M) workers, who always gave revolutionary speeches about
their agenda to fight for the rights of the commoners, killed those monks from
which ideology? Why did the CPI (M) government save those killers from the
hands of the law? Why have the murderers been walking around in the daylight
until now? The questions are worthless today. Behind their every "laal
selam", every red flag, and their every revolutionary speech, their dirty
politics, murders, and rapes every day had created a deep wound in the chest of
Bengal for 34 years.
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