For instance, within hours of capturing Kantapahari, the forces demolished the camp for refugees run by the Pulisi Santras Birodhi Janaganer Committee (People's Committee against Police Atrocities - PCPA), on Vivekananda High School campus, and turned it into a police camp. The refugees were unceremoniously thrown out.

Reports have it that the excesses committed by the state police and para-military forces have forced over 70, 000 innocent people in 320-odd villages to flee their hearths and homes.

An estimated 11,000 cops backed by with satellite-aided reconnaissance arrangements were pressed into action to track down about 100 trained guerrillas of the CPI(Maoist). Estimates by intelligence officials put the figure of Maoists at 1,500 in the region around Lalgarh comprising 18 police stations of Paschim Medinipur, Bankura and Purulia districts. So far, only five Maoists have been nabbed, however.

Just one instance would suffice to show the enormity of it all. Chitamani Murmu, the adivasi woman who prevented the police of Lalgarh PS from nabbing, in the first week of November 2008, her old husband branded a Maoist-suspect, had her eyes damaged allegedly by the officer-in-charge of Lalgarh police station Sandip Sinha Roy with the butt of a gun. Examination at the Medical College & Hospitals in Kolkata confirmed that she is now blind. See the plight of Panamani Hansda, who suffered multiple fractures after being kicked in the chest. Medical reports said Panamani's injury too was caused by police excesses.

But Sinha Roy and his subordinates are still at large. Not even a warning memo has been issued to them. The police raid, local sources say, was an act of revenge for a land mine blast at Salboni, 30 km away from Lalgarh. The blast occurred after the foundation stone of the Rs 30,000-crore integrated steel plant under the Jindal group, was laid by the then Union steel minister Ram Vilas Paswan and West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee on November 2, 2008. The police thought the mine blast was the handiwork of the Maoists hiding at Lalgarh. Hence the indiscriminate excesses against the innocent villagers.

The large-scale police action has been strongly criticised by those who visited Lalgarh, Goaltore, Bhimpur, Peerakata and other Adivasi-areas such as Goaldanga, Hadhadi and Bholagara during the last eight months. Many journalists, who preferred anonymity, allege that their stories were spiked or drastically diluted. But a few intrepid local dailies reported that an overwhelming majority of the populace heaved a sigh of relief in the wake of the setting up of the PCPA unit. “For over six months, our male members have been sleeping peacefully at night as the nightmare of police torture has vanished for the time being at least. We are all with and behind the Pulisi Santras Birodhi Janaganer Committee,” Montu Soren (name changed) told us outside the hut of Lalgarh Sanhati Mancha (Lalgarh Solidarity Forum - LSF) at Baropelia on May 8 when we were there. . LSF convener and permanent invitee of the PCPA Sumit Chowdhury told IPA, “In about 1500 villages in three districts, PCPA units comprising five male and five female representatives were formed.

However, the CPI(M) politburo and West Bengal State Committee have backed the joint action to restore law and order in Kantapahari, the adivasi-dominated “Jangal Mahal”. Significantly, this is despite the warning by an editorial of the People's Democracy (December 21, 2008). It had warned the UPA Government of the possibility of gross misuse of three clauses in U(A)PC, “brought back from the repealed Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA)”. The first, contained in clause 43 D, seeks to amend Section 167 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) to extend the period of detention without bail to 180 days from the existing period ranging from 15 to 90 days.

But the LF Government has begun applying the amended statute though the CPI(M) Central Committee is yet to permit it to do so. CPI(M) general secretary Prakash Karat and Bengal CPI(M) secretary Biman Bose, have, however, maintained silence on the 'misuse' of the provisions of the law by both the UPA Government and the West Bengal Government.

The rationale for the biggest-ever raid by security forces in West Bengal under the Left Front regime was to flush out the Maoists. But who were the Maoists? Incidentally, even Trinamool Congress chief and Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee, pathologically opposed to the CPI(M) - has branded the PCPA general secretary Chhatradhar Mahato and most of its members as Maoists. National media - including the Media Foundation that runs a website thehoot.org - is obsessed with the notion that Mahato and PCPA are guided by the CPI(Maoist). The minutes, in Bengali, of a PCPA meeting held on November 18, 2008, which are with the SP SP Paschim Medinipur, last begin with the words “Ramakrishnaya” ( salutation to Ramakrishna Paramahansa). Will a Maoist outfit or its mass front use such salutations? Mahato himself has said in several interviews that he does not believe in Maoist philosophy nor in terrorism.

Surprisingly, the TMC supremo told Tehelka in an interview that the “TMC has no links with the Maoists. Chhatradhar Mahato was a TMC member but when we learnt that he had Maoist links, we expelled him from the party. The CPI(M) has links with them. That's why they are opposing the ban on the Maoists.” Her words - although untrue - came handy for the Union Home Minister P Chidambaram and West Bengal police brass to give Mahato the 'Maoist' tag in order to throw him into prison for six months without being produced in a court under the U(A)PC which is far worse than the UK Terrorism Act that permits the police to detain a suspect for not more than 28 days unless substantiated with records, documents and evidence.

A disturbing feature of the situation is the double-standards adopted by the police. For instance, Chief Secretary Ashok Mohan Chakraborty is said to have directed the police to file a case under Section 188 of the IPC against a group of intellectuals for visiting Lalgarh including film director Aparna Sen, stage actress and director Saoli Mitra representing Swajan, a voluntary cultural forum, on June 21, 2009, alleging that they violated Section 144 clamped on the entire region.

Nobody is justifying violence resorted to by the Maoists. But the propensity to arbitrarily give the Maoist tag to throttle democratic rights has been denounced not only by intellectuals but also by former police officers and former high court judges. It looks like anarchy in the name of keeping law and order. (IPA Service)