[Reader-list] Nandigram

[Sudeshna Chatterjee]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Subrata Ghosh <from.subrata at gmail.com>
Date: Mar 21, 2007 6:10 AM
Subject: Nandigram
To: from.subrata at gmail.com

 Dear Friend,

These days I try to think more of the plants and the animals and less of the
last to evolve on the planet Earth.  It is not that I do or contribute
much.  Neither am I an activist nor do I pose to be a reformer.  I have my
fear and limitations and I am well aware of that.  Having said this,
however, I always try to be of help in whatever little way I can, as and
when needed.

What prompted me to write this letter is a programme that I saw on a local
TV channel tonight.  My journalist friend Mr. Kabir Suman had physician Dr.
Debapriya Mallik as his guest in a talk show and it was from Dr. Mallik that
I came to know in details the aftermath of the March 14, 2007 mass killings
in Nandigram, West Bengal.  What I heard left me dumbfounded.

I have heard of what Suman has seen at the Tamluk Hospital.  What the first
hand account of Dr. Mallik revealed added to the scale of brutality of the
massacre.  His first impression of the area was like a place ravaged by
war.  The injured he met told their stories.  So did the trauma stricken
village people.

The bullet wounds were mostly in the chests and abdomens (much above the
knee height clearly indicating the intention to kill and not just to
disperse the crowd).  Other weapons and instruments were used to strike the
people too.  Apart from the police force, there were people in uniform but
in slippers who led the attack on the villagers.  These dresses, as
reported, were supplied by a local tailoring shop.

There were women as young as 20 and as old as 50, gangraped.  The doctor
spoke to a couple of these ladies.  Women were molested, and young girls
too.  Piles of inner wears were found at different places.

Children were butchered, mercilessly, legs torn apart, beheaded, tortured to
death.  An unborn was killed too.

Even the trees in the vicinity were not spared, the doctor said.

Dr. Mallik has photographic evidence.  What else could he bring back?

Around 800 people are still missing in the area.  The media and the West
Bengal Government still stick to 14 people being killed on that fateful day.

At 6:00 in the morning after spending a sleepless night locked in my secured
room on a secured land in a privileged metropolitan city, I feel helpless.

Do I condemn the brutality and killings?  Or do I sit idle and watch the
protests fade and wither?

I do not really know.  I wish I was never born.  I was never asked, anyways.

Subrata

Salt Lake, Kolkata
March 21, 2007
_________________________________________________

Note:
I have signed the online petition: "Denounce State Terror in Nandigram, West
Bengal" hosted on the web by PetitionOnline.com at:
http://www.PetitionOnline.com/nandigra/<http://www.petitiononline.com/nandigra/>
.  If
you can spare a moment, please take a look, and consider signing yourself.





- -- 
Sudeshna Chatterjee, PhD
Partner, Kaimal Chatterjee & Associates
New Delhi, India
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