Chhatradhar Mahato recently inducted as a TMC state committee leader grilled by NIA in two decade-old cases

Chhatradhar Mahato recently inducted as a TMC state committee leader grilled by NIA in two decade-old cases

“I have come to Salboni from Jhargram to meet the NIA officers, who had summoned me for questioning in two 11-year- old cases. I will cooperate with them. Earlier they had summoned me for questioning in Kolkata but I couldn't attend them due to the Covid-19 situation,” Chhatradhar Mahato said before entering the CRPF camp.

Biswabrata Goswami

Hummingbird News

MIDNAPORE, 28 AUG: Chhatradhar Mahato, a prominent leader in Junglemahal, who once led the Maoist-backed People’s Committee Against Police Atrocities (PCAPA) and currently a state committee leader of Trinamul Congress was reportedly grilled by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) in two 11-year-old cases of train hijack and murder of a CPI-M leader.

Mahato, who was inducted in the TMC state committee in July and given leadership roles in the Junglemahal region, was questioned by a team of NIA officers at Salboni CRPF camp.

“I have come to Salboni from Jhargram to meet the NIA officers, who had summoned me for questioning in two 11-year- old cases. I will cooperate with them. Earlier they had summoned me for questioning in Kolkata but I couldn't attend them due to the Covid-19 situation,” he said before entering the CRPF camp.

“The BJP is using NIA to intimidate me by using false cases that occurred more than a decade ago. I will keep opposing their communal politics,” the 57-year-old TMC leader said.
Mahato was a prominent leader of the Lalgarh movement that was spearheaded by PCAPA in the late 2000s. He is one of the accused in the killing of a CPI-M leader in Junglemahal area.

He has also been named in the October 2009 hijacking of New Delhi-bound Bhubaneshwar-Rajdhani Express for five hours at Jhargram station demanding his release.
Mahato was arrested on 26 September, 2009 from Birkar village in Lalgarh, by police from present-day Jhargram district for an attempt on the lives of former chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, the then union ministers Jitin Prasad and Ram Vilas Paswan and the then state industries minister Nirupam Sen at Kalaichandikhal in Salboni of West Midnapore district on 2 November, 2008.

After 11 years behind bars for assorted crimes, including charges under the draconian UAPA (Unlawful Activities Prevention Act), Chhatradhar came out in February 2020 to find that his land had undergone a transformation, the red laterite soil, once soaked in the political colours of the Left, was sprouting saffron shoots.

And the Mahatos, especially those who had rallied behind him and the Maoist outfit, the People’s Committee against Police Atrocities (PCAPA), to overthrow the then Left Front government, are now calling the shots as panchayat and zilla parishad functionaries.

They now live in pucca houses and move around in SUVs; they are the establishment. The divide is glaring and there is discontent among the locals, who feel the Mahatos and their political mentors are fleecing the poor of their entitlements under various government schemes. Indeed, many now consider them worse than the zam­­indars the Left got rid of through the land reform movement in the late 1970s.

The Mahatos are OBCs and make up 32 per cent of the population in the Jangal Mahal area, which includes the 42 assembly seats of West Midnapore, Purulia and Bankura districts. The SCs/ STs cover another 28 per cent. Chhatradhar’s initiation into mainstream politics last week as a secretary of the TMC is largely seen as an attempt to win back the Mahatos, who seemed to have voted en bloc for the BJP in the 2019 Lok Sabha election.