The state government will give Rs 2 lakh compensation to the families of the martyrs who were gunned down by the erstwhile Left Front government on July 21, 1993, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee announced at the Martyrs' Day rally organised in their remembrance on Friday.
After coming to power in 2011, the Trinamool Congress government set up a one-man commission headed by Justice (Retd) Susanta Chatterjee of Calcutta High Court. The commission remarked that "the incident was worst than what had happened at Jallianwala Bagh. Around 70 rounds of bullets were fired and the police over reacted to please their political bosses."
Jyoti Basu was the then Chief Minister and Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee was the then Information and Cultural Affairs minister. The commission had summoned five police officers including then Commissioner of Police Tushar Talukdar. The other officers were Dinesh Vajpayee, the then Additional Commissioner of Police, R K Johuri, Joint Commissioner of Police, N K Singh, Deputy Commissioner (South) and Kanwaljit Singh, Joint Commissioner of Police and their statements were recorded. Manish Gupta who is now Trinamool's Rajya Sabha MP, was then the state Home Secretary.
Banerjee said that FIRs would be lodged against the tainted police officers who had ordered the firing.
"I won't touch (late Chief Minister) Jyoti Basu or (then Police Minister) Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee. But action will be taken against those who had fired. FIRs will be lodged against them," said Banerjee. "After coming to power, I had also given jobs to one family member of these victims. But still, in deference to the commission, we would give a further Rs 2 lakh to each of these families," she said. The Chief Minister claimed that close to 1000 workers — 100 of them with bullet injuries — had been hospitalised on that day "following police brutality". She maintained that as per recommendations of the commission, the state government will pay compensation to the families of the martyrs.
However, she did not spell out
what kind of action the state government would take against the officers except the fact that FIRs will be lodged against them.