By IANS
Kolkata : A shutdown in Singur town called by the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) to protest the arrest of a party leader for the rape and murder of a girl has paralysed work at the Tata Motors project – the very starting point of the land acquisition controversy.
"Work in the Tata Motors project is affected since morning. No official has turned up and no lorry entered the site," said Sunanda Kolay, a CPI-M Panchayat member from Singur, about 40 km from Kolkata in Hooghly district.
Tata Motors sources told IANS there was no work in the project since morning and CPI-M members themselves had requested the workers to express solidarity with them.
While there was a lukewarm response to the shutdown in the morning with most markets remaining open, the strike impacted life as the day progressed. Many shops, schools and colleges in the area were closed.
Traffic on the showpiece Durgapur Expressway, one of the reasons for Tata Motors to choose Singur for the project, was affected by the shutdown.
"Now the traffic is flowing," Hooghly Additional Superintendent of Police Asit Pal said late in the afternoon.
"There has been no untoward incident in the area since morning," Pal said.
However, in some major market areas of Singur most shops were open, rare in a shutdown called by a ruling party as powerful as the CPI-M in West Bengal.
CPI-M's opponent Krishijami Raksha Committee (Save Farmland Committee) also brought out processions in Singur during the day.
While the CPI-M went on the offensive with a 12-hour shutdown call to protest the arrest of the party's Singur Zonal Committee secretary Surhit Dutta, a jubilant Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee geared up for an evening rally in the area to demand capital punishment for the alleged killers of 18-year-old Tapasi Malik – whose charred body was recovered Dec 18 from an area fenced off for the Tata plant.
"The shutdown has been called by the dacoits of the CPI-M to protect the dacoits," Banerjee said sarcastically Friday night after visiting the family of the victim.
While Dutta was arrested Thursday evening by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), main accused CPI-M worker Debu Malik, who was in charge of the night guards at the project site, was arrested in New Delhi and brought to Kolkata Wednesday night.
The arrests have come as a huge embarrassment to the CPI-M, which has labelled the entire episode a "conspiracy".
CPI-M patriarch Jyoti Basu refused to comment on the "sub judice" matter. Asked if he would call it a political conspiracy, he said: "Our party men think so."
The shutdown contradicts a statement by Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya that "law would take its own course in the case and the guilty would be punished irrespective of party affiliation".
Dutta and Malik were remanded in CBI custody by the Chandannagore court of Hooghly district Friday for their alleged role in the killing of Tapasi Malik, who along with her family was at the forefront of the anti-land acquisition movement in Singur.
Malik would be in CBI custody till July 7 and Dutta till July 12.
Mamata Banerjee said: "I would not comment on the CBI probe at this juncture but we all want punishment for the culprits. An innocent girl had to pay with her life for protesting land acquisition."
Some 997 acres in Singur have been chosen by Tata Motors for its small car project. The issue has triggered a violent face-off between the government and farmers led by civil society groups and parties like the Trinamool Congress.