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Calcutta tense as bodies arrive from Midnapore

Rifat Jawaid in Calcutta

Tension gripped north Calcutta on Tuesday night after the Midnapore district police sent four highly decomposed corpses for post-mortem examination at the morgue under the Jhorasanko police station.

The West Bengal police denied the remains were those of victims of the alleged massacre of Trinamul Congress activists at Choto Anguria village in Garbeta block of Midnapore.

Inspector A H Hussain, officer in charge of Jhorasanko police station, said the case papers sent with the bodies were of murders in Pingla block. Three of the bodies are decomposed beyond visual recognition while the fourth is just a skeleton.

But Trinamul Congress politicians believe the police are trying to cover up the Garbeta murders and insisted that they be allowed to view and photograph the remains.

Sudip Bandopadhyay, leader of the Trinamul Congress in Parliament, Calcutta Mayor Subrata Mukherjee, and three members of the state assembly were camping outside the morgue through the night with their supporters. Congress MLA Tapas Roy was also there with his supporters and the morgue walls were awash with Congress and Trinamul flags.

The opposition politicians have threatened to force their way into the mortuary when it opens on Wednesday morning to view and photograph the remains. But Deputy Inspector General of Police (public relations) Gautam Chakravarty said there was no way they could be allowed inside.

Chakravarty, until recently joint commissioner of police, Calcutta, visited the mortuary at night on the orders of Director General of Police Dipak Sanyal. He told rediff.com that he had spoken to Midnapore Superintendent of Police Gaurav Datta, who had told him that the remains related to three different cases of possible political violence in Midnapore district.

The skeleton, according to Chakravarty, relates to a case filed in Pingla block in July 1999 while the other three corpses relate to two cases filed in November 2000 in the same block. Interestingly, all three cases were filed by local Communist Party of India, Marxist, politicians complaining of missing cadres.

Chakravarty said the remains were found in December 2000 and a post-mortem was conducted at the Kharagpur divisional headquarters the same month, but it failed to identify the corpses. So the divisional health officer sought the permission of the state's director of health services to send the remains for a second post-mortem in north Calcutta. The morgue under Jhorasanko police station is considered to have the best staff in the state.

Chakravarty said there was nothing extraordinary in such a request and there are a couple of such cases every month. He said the forensic department's director, A K Gupta, would perform the post-mortem examination on Wednesday.

But no matter what the result, it is only sure to fuel more controversy and conflict.

EARLIER REPORT:
4 bodies from Midnapore brought to Calcutta morgue

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