In the night of 23 November, police raids Takia village of Mirzapur in U.P. and arrests Com. Ramkrit Biyar, Ashok Kol and Jitendra Kol, members of Party’s Mirzapur district leading team, while they were in their sleep. Their mouths are gagged with a cloth and they are kept confined for the whole night in Sukrint police outpost, and brutally beaten there.
Next day, when Com. Sudhakar Yadav, member of Party’s state standing committee, goes to the outpost to ask the reason behind the arrest of the three leaders, the outpost incharge misbehaves with him and later resorts to brutal lathicharge over the Party activists and people sitting on a dharna 250 yards away from the outpost. Even women are not spared. Twelve persons including Com. Sudhakar are arrested, tied to a tree within the outpost premises and badly beaten. They are beaten repeatedly while being taken to the magistrate at Mirzapur. On the night of 25 November, these comrades are sent to Mirzapur Jail, where they are even denied potable water. They are forced to take the gutter water.
Around noon on 25 November, state Party secretary and Politburo member Com. Akhilendra Pratap Singh informs the district administration regarding these acts of police highhandedness and sits on an indefinite fast before the district collectorate in protest. In the night, police arrests him, along with Com. Md. Salim, district Party secretary and RYA state president, and ten others, on the apprehension of violation of peace.
At the same time, police is on the rampage throughout the district since 23 November. CPI(ML) activists and sympathisers are arrested from village after village, and beaten in the police stations. The background to this police crackdown is the ransacking of a PAC camp at Khoradih village in Rajgarh block of Mirzapur district on 22 November. While initiating his fast, Com. Akhilendra puts forth three questions before the administration: Why don’t they come out with the name of the organisation they think that had perpetrated the attack? Why the CPI(ML) activists were being attacked and arrested? Would the administration take action against the police personnel guilty of brutally beating Maaley leaders? However, without answering these questions, the administration goes on butchering democracy and unleashing a reign of terror throughout the area. Raids are conducted in dozens of villages including Takia, Madhupur, Batt, Banthara, Bhawanipur, Gaurathi, Chaukhatha, Bhiti, Bahuara, houses are searched without warrant, cash and jewelry looted and youth are caught, women are raped, an example of this brutality being the rape of Gita Kol, wife of Babloo Kol, by policemen in the village Chikhuria.
In fact, though the attack on PAC camp at Khoradih provided the immediate pretext for launching a district level terror campaign, the main motive behind Rajnath Singh’s move was to take revenge of the intiative taken by the Party in his home district (Mirzapur) to punish police officials guilty of perpetrating Bhawanipur massacre. With this move Rajnath also intends to push back the rising wave of mobilisation of the downtrodden agrarian labourers and poor peasants under the banner of Naxalism and break the morale of the poor.
The whole party rose up in mass movements against the police atrocities on the rural poor and the arrest of Party state secretary. The next day, on 26 November, roads were blocked at several places in Mirzapur, Sonebhadra and Chandauli districts and the effigy of Rajnath Singh was burnt. On 27 November, a state-wide protest day was observed, under which dharnas were held at district collectorate in Sonebhadra, Ghazipur, Chandauli and Ballia districts, before Vidhan Sabha in Lucknow and also in many other towns. The administration denied permission to hold this programme in Mirzapur and clamped section 144, to remian in effect till 10 December. However, large number of youth activists led by Com. Pradeep, district convenor of RYA, brought out a resistance march covering their eyes with black bands, and burnt the effigy of Rajnath all the same. The main road was blocked for hours and a meeting was held there decrying the police atrocities, addressed by Comrades Radheshyam Yadav, Munna Bind, Ramkrit Bind, Dr. Vijay Patel and Nandlal. The wave of resistance spread to village after village. In Chandauli, there was a powerful protest against these arrests. In Chakia, Naugarh and Shikarganj, people spontaneously burnt the effigy of Rajnath Singh. Socialists, intellectuals, human rights organisations, literary personalities including Anand Dipayan, Dipak Malik, Anand Tiwari, Balraj Pandey, Dinbbandhu Tiwari etc. of Varanasi passed resolutions to condemn the state terror. Chittarajan Singh, state vice-president of PUCL, rushed to Mirzapur, visited the villages to meet the victims of repression. He also met the arrested comrades in the jail, prepared a report and submitted it to the Human Rights Commission. He found that Comrade Ramkrit Biyar was bleeding while urination because of the police torture, but the insensitive jail administration was not sending him for treatment. On the other hand, Comrade Akhilendra continued with his fast inside the jail and refused to meet the emissary of the DM unless all the arrested comrades were unconditionally released.
Hearing the news, a team comprising Comrades Swadesh Bhattacharya, Party Politburo member, Krishna Adhikari, CC member, ex-MP Rameshwar Prasad and Arun Singh, MLA rushed to Mirzapur. They visited the villages and also met the District Magistrate. A meeting of the opposition parties was called on 28 November, participated in by political parties and mass organisations, and it was decided there to stage a dharna on 1 December. The well-attended dharna was led by CPI(M) district secretary Pyarelal Jaiswal. As the administration constantly refused to unconditionally release the comrades, the Party issued a call “Mirzapur Chalo” (March to Mirzapur) on 5 December. The prospect of a state-level militant protest mobilisation in Mirzapur and resultant law and order problem put the administration on defensive and it had to bow down. Ultimately they released all the comrades unconditionally on 2 December.
However, the Party did not call of the “Mirzapur Chalo” programme and thousands of activists and sympathisers poured into Mirzapur on the scheduled 5 December. A large procession, in which local rual poor, dalits and adivasis, including large number of women, with red flags and placards in hands, passed through the main streets of Mirzapur town raising slogans: “Naxalbari Zindabad”, “Off with police hooliganism”, “Down with Rajnath Singh’s fascism” and “Stop butchering democracy”. Wide cross section of people of Mirzapur, including the trading community of Wasliganj rendered their support to the processionists. The collectorate was literally flooded with the people on that day. The mobilisation was unprecedented for a small town like Mirzapur. Newspapers even commented that the commonman tasted the power of mass mobilisation that day and the administration and the police were at the receiving end. The hands that showered lathi blows on the poor were shaking that day.
Addressing the dharna-cum-mass meeting at the collectorate, Party General Secretary Comrade Dipankar Bhattacharya attacked Rajnath Singh for boasting that he would clamp POTO in the state even if it were not passed by Parliament. He said that the people of Mirzapur-Sonebhadra-Chandauli have on the basis of their organised and struggling strength and democratic movement have given a fitting rebuff to Rajnath’s dress-rehearsal of POTO regime. And the dharna today has proclimed that if the BJP Govt. in the centre does not wind up POTO, the people have conducted the dress-rehearsal of their battle to wind up BJP rule in Delhi. He said that such attempts to finish off the struggle for justice, democracy, land and wages have been made for umpteen times since Naxalbari, time and again in Bihar, but the only result has been further strengthening of the poor people’s grip over the red flag. And this repression campaign will also result in turning this region of eastern U.P. into another citadel of CPI(ML)’s resistance struggle. CPI(ML) has a history of making sacrifices in the struggle against emergency and Indira autocracy, and now its activists are braving lathis, bullets and jails of Atal-Advani-Rajnath Singh government. Like the earlier dictatorial rules, people will throw off the present repressive regime too.
He said that this repression on the eve of legislative assembly elections in the state only proves that Rajnath Singh has planned to stay in power relying on repression and terror. So the questions for land, wages, dignity and democracy must be made an issue in the coming electoral battle and the defeat of this government will mark a step ahead in the course of this struggle. He said that the CPI(ML) is the heartthrob of democracy and a fitting rebuff to the attempts to silence it will be a thorough elimination of communal fascism.
Addressing the meeting Comrade Akhilendra said that the agrarian labourers of dalit and adivasi origin throughout this region have been suffering for weeks at the hands of brutal police repression. Still people have displayed the courage to reach here in this dharna in such a large strength, defying police cordons. On the basis of this struggling spirit of the people, we hold a firm faith that our struggle will continue till the police officials including the IG, who are culprits of Bhawanipur massacre, are punished to death by the High Court. He also said that for landlords Naxalism is a spectre, but for the poor it is a path of liberation. He pointed out that the responsibility of Khoradih incident did not lie with the PAC men, it lay with Rajnath government which had closed all the avenues of democratic protest and resistance. Instead of punishing the culprits of Bhawanipur massacre, it was rewarding them. Taking a dig at BSP he said that it is Mayawati who has weakened the movement of dalit and adivasi agrarian labourers by entering into opportunistic alliances with the communal fascist BJP. Now she does not even issue a statement on incidents of massacre and rape of dalits and adivasis. Our Party has a tradition that the leaders shed their blood where agrarian labourers shed their blood, he proclaimed. Com. Rameshwar Prasad, Chittaranjan Singh, CPI(M) district secretary Pyarelal Jaiswal, Naugarh block pramukh Basmati Kol, Sudhakar Yadav, Ambarish Rai, Yashwant Singh, district panchayat member of Ghazipur Ishwari Prasad Kushwaha, district panchayat member of Mughalsarai Tilakdhari Bind, Dinkar Kapoor of AICCTU, Ajit Singh Yadav of AISA, Shubhra of AIPWA, Party leaders Bigan Ram Gaur, Ramkrit Biyar and Ashok Kol also addressed the meeting. The dharna was presided over by Ramgulli Chaturvedi and conducted by Md. Salim.