Nandigram carnage: CBI files charge-sheet against 2 IPS officers

Three police personnel including two senior IPS officers of the city police along with nine others were charge-sheeted by the CBI in connection with the Nandigram case.

The CBI on Sunday filed the charge-sheet in the court of the Additional Chief Judicial magistrate (I) in Haldia.

The two IPS officers against whom the charge-sheet has been filed are Satyajit Bandyopadhyay, the Additional Commissioner of the city police and Debashis Boral who served as the Joint Police Commissioner (Crime) and now is in compulsory waiting while Shekhar Roy is an Assistant Commissioner in Howrah. The Nandigram incident, often termed as the Waterloo for CPI(M), opened a new chapter in Bengal politics which ultimately helped the Trinamool Congress to come to power in 2011 putting an end to 34 year's of CPI(M) rule.

On March 14, 2007, the police opened fire killing 14 villagers in Nandigram and leaving 70 more injured. The police along with CPI(M) cadre had looted houses and set them on fire and many women were allegedly raped. A Division Bench of the Calcutta High Court had declared the police firing as "unconstitutional and cannot be justified under any provision of law." It had further ordered to pay a compensation of Rs 5 lakh to the next of kin of the dead, Rs 2 lakh compensation to the raped victims and not less than Rs 1 lakh to the injured. The CPI(M) government had decided to set up a chemical hub at Nandigram and proposed to acquire 4,000 hectare of land from the farmers under the Special Economic Zone (SEZ). The farmers severely opposed the move. The chemical hub was to be built by the Salim group of Indonesia. The High Court had ordered an inquiry by the CBI.

Mamata Banerjee stood beside the farmers and launched a massive movement. She was soon joined by many intellectuals including litterateur Mahasweta Devi and singer Kabir Suman. Nandigram marked the beginning of CPIM's decline in Bengal. In the Panchayat election which was held in 2008, Trinamool Congress got 35 out of 53 seats in the Zilla Parishad in East Midnapore.