SILIGURI/KOLKATA: West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee on Sunday said that Saturday’s deaths in Sitalkuchi were a “Nandigram-style genocide”. She said the Election Commission should rename the Model Code of Conduct as the “Modi Code of Conduct” and said the poll panel’s 72-hour ban on travelling to Cooch Behar — which prevented her from meeting the victims’ kin — was “inhuman and unprecedented”.
On Saturday five people were killed during Bengal’s fourth round of polling. Four of them were killed when a CISF unit that had been allegedly attacked, opened fire on a mob in Cooch Behar’s Sitalkuchi. The other victim was first-time voter Ananda Burman, who was gunned down by bike-borne assailants as he stepped out of a polling booth after voting. The EC, in an unprecedented order, later barred the entry into Cooch Behar of leaders of all political parties for the next 72 hours citing “law and order” concerns.
Addressing the press, Banerjee minced no words. “Nandigram was a genocide. This was also a genocide,” she said, explaining that she was using this term as the victims were shot “in the neck and chest, not in their feet or lower parts of the body”. The 72-hour window imposed by EC, she said, would allow “evidence to be destroyed”, since both PM Narendra Modi and home minister Amit Shah had already given “clean chits” to the central forces.
The CM questioned why lethal weapons were employed in crowd control. “Where are the injuries (to the central forces)? These are poor migrant labourers. People who died were 20-25 years old; one had a pregnant wife, the other a three-year-old-daughter. It was a murder of democracy.”