Nandigram, November 10: West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari on Tuesday announced that his government will reopen the files of the 2007 Nandigram violence and register fresh FIRs against former Left Front leaders, addressing a gathering at Gokulnagar on the 19th anniversary of the November 10, 2007 incident. Adhikari said the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) probe conducted after the violence never led to a trial, and that the victims' families were still waiting for justice.

Source: Qalam Times

Making his most serious allegation of the day, the Chief Minister claimed that 11 people who disappeared during the 2007 violence were taken away with their hands tied, held at a gram panchayat office in the Baratala area, then taken to Kamarda and killed, and that their bodies were disposed of in the deep sea the following day. These are allegations made by the Chief Minister at a political anniversary programme; the reports carried no independent verification of the claims and no response from the CPI(M) was reported.

Source: Qalam Times

What happened on November 10, 2007

On November 10, 2007, members of the Bhumi Uchhed Pratirodh Committee (BUPC), formed to resist proposed land acquisition for industrial projects in Nandigram in Purba Medinipur district, took out a procession from Sonachura towards Maheshpur. According to accounts of the day, two people were killed and 12 people were initially recorded as missing in police records. The recapture drive of that day is remembered as 'Operation Suryodaya', and the disappearances became one of Bengal's longest-running political controversies.

Adhikari recalled that a CID investigation followed the violence and that former Tamluk MP Lakshman Seth had spent 181 days in jail, but maintained that the judicial process had not delivered complete justice. At the programme he remembered Shyamali Manna and Rezaul Karim, who were among those killed in the firing, and recalled former Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee's reported remark of the time, 'They have been paid back in their own coin'.

The Chief Minister also alleged that former Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, during her 15 years in power, had not provided death certificates to the families of the missing, and said he had repeatedly approached the Calcutta High Court on the matter. He argued that the Nandigram movement was a people's struggle against the then Left Front government's land acquisition policies, and predicted the Trinamool Congress would not return to power for 100 years.

What happens next

The Chief Minister has promised a fresh FIR and a renewed look at the deaths and disappearances of 2007. Whether a new case can be registered, and what it can establish 19 years later, will depend on the evidence available and the legal status of the earlier investigations and proceedings.

The Nandigram movement of 2007 reshaped West Bengal's politics, weakening the Left Front and contributing to the change of government in 2011. Nineteen years on, the fate of the missing remains, for their families, an open question — and, after Tuesday's announcement, once again a live political and legal file in the state.