Darjeeling, Nov. 28: A fresh case
of arson has been slapped on seven jailed Gorkha Janmukti Morcha
leaders, upsetting the hill party at a time it has started mending
fences with the state government.
Morcha sources said an angry Bimal
Gurung, the hill party chief, called senior leader Roshan Giri and
asked why they had been calling the recent talks with the state
government “encouraging”.
Morcha Kalimpong
MLA Harka Bahadur Chhetri, speaking over phone, said: “I was in Calcutta
yesterday and Roshan called me up to pass on the party president’s
query. The party president is justified in asking us such questions as
the state government talks about one thing and does just the opposite.”
Chhetri said what
the state administration was doing was political vendetta. “Even an
illiterate person would know that false cases are being brought against
the leaders…. In the entire process, we leaders (who are talking with
the state government) are getting discredited before the public and
before the family members of the arrested leaders,” he said.
“It is nothing but
humiliation by the state government as they are forcing us to act like
beggars. How long are we to go to them with the same issue just to hear
their same false assurances?” he asked.
Both Chhetri and
Giri had come as part of the Morcha team for the bipartite and
tripartite talks with the state and the Centre in Calcutta on November
20-21. The Morcha team had requested the withdrawal of cases against
party leaders.
Earlier this
month, chief minister Mamata Banerjee had said the cases against the
jailed Morcha leaders and supporters would be viewed individually before
decisions were taken.
Chhetri said: “I
spoke to our party president last evening and told him that there is no
reason for us (the MLAs) to sit in the Assembly. I have asked him that
he must withdraw us from the Assembly immediately.”
Gurung has reportedly told Chhetri that they should discuss the issue when he returns from Calcutta.
This morning,
Pankaj Prasad, the assistant public prosecutor, confirmed that the seven
Morcha leaders were “shown arrest” for their alleged involvement in an
arson case.
“Shown arrest” is a
legal term to denote that the accused have been arrested in a
particular case — in this instance the Rimbick forest building burning
of August 2, 2013.
“Pasang Tamang
(youth leader of the Morcha from Kalimpong), Mahendra Pradhan, Arun
Sinji, Anit Thapa, Anush Thapa, Pranay Thapa and Yogendra Rai were
yesterday tagged for their involvement in burning down a forest office
at Rimbick on August 2, 2013,” Prasad said.
Apart from Pasang, the other six are elected GTA Sabha members.
The case will be heard in the court of the chief judicial magistrate of Darjeeling on December 4.
After the Morcha
revived its statehood movement on July 29 this year, alleged supporters
of the party led arson attacks on several government properties. On
August 2, alleged Morcha activists set fire to the forest office in
Rimbick, 90km from Darjeeling.
The forest staff doused the fire quickly. No one was injured.
On the same night
of the Rimbick arson, alleged Morcha supporters also set fire to a
forest bungalow in Takdah where chief minister Mamata Banerjee had
stayed during one of her many earlier trips to the hills.
In the arrests
that followed, several Morcha supporters and leaders, including Binay
Tamang, were charged in the Takdah arson attack case.
The seven who have
been accused in the Rimbick case have been charged under the IPC
sections 436 (mischief with fire or explosives with intent to destroy
house), 447 (criminal trespass), 120B (criminal conspiracy), and Section
3 of the Prevention of Destruction of Public Property Act. All the
sections are non-bailable, which makes the prospect of early release of
the seven remote.
A senior home
department official said in Calcutta: “There is no agenda behind the
fresh cases being filed…. All the cases being filed relate to the period
of the agitation and not now.”(The Telegraph)