Flirting with murderers...

The Past

On the 30th of May, Thirteen coaches of the Howrah-Kurla Jnaneswari Express were derailed in West Bengal. A Goods train later rammed into these coaches, resulting in the deaths of more than 140 people. Basically what happened was that the tracks on which the ill fated train was, were removed (by who else, but the Naxalites). And after the train derailed, a goods train coming from the other side rammed into this train. Now some would call this sabotage, some would call this a terrorist act. Either way, everyone would want the people behind this attack to be bought to justice. No one would even want to associate themselves with the perpetrators of this crime.

A coupld of days after this attack, a PCAPA (People's Committee Against Police Atrocities) leader had this to say:

“We are sorry. We never wanted these innocent civilians to die. Trust me, we targeted the goods train. But somehow, we were fed wrong information that the goods train would cross through this track and we removed pandrol clips from a long stretch. We did not want to harm civilians. There must have been some miscalculation.”

You read it right - the Naxalite leader "apologised" for messing up their "target". Anyways, the CBI made some arrests, and the state police also announced rewards for some leaders of PCAPA.

The Present

Union Railway Minister and President of All India Trinamool Congress, Mamta Banerjee held a rally in Lalgarh (the bastion of the Naxalites) on August 9th. If you think she did it by defying the Maoists, no you are mistaken! She did it with the support of Maoists. And with the support of the same group - PCAPA. The same group that has accepted responsibility for removing the tracks, later "apologising" for their "goof-up". The same group that has been responsible for the loss of 141 lives whose only mistake was to be on that ill fated train. Take a look at this picture (via @centerofright) - the PCAPA terrorist who has a one lakh reward on his head is leading a gang to the rally of Mamta Banerjee.

In another twist in the tale, one of the "supporter" group of the rally is infact upset that Mamta has not spoken about their demands!

And at the same rally, Mamta Banerjee also declared that the killing of Maoist leader Azad was wrong. She declared that she thinks this is murder. Azad was killed in an encounter with AP police. By the way, here's a small list of crimes Azad is involved in:

1. Killing of Panchayat Raj Minister, A. Madhava Reddy in AP
2. Killing of 2 IPS officer, Vyas and Umesh Chandra, in AP
3. Killing of former Speaker D. Sripada Rao, in AP
4. The Attack on Chandrababu Naidu, then CM of AP.

This begs the question - What does the future hold for us?

Mamta Banerjee's crass acts can no more be justified under any political compulsions. Hell - there is no politics involved in criticising her in the first place. This is plain ridiculous that such a high ranking minister in the Government of India, openly courts the Maoists/terrorists and we are to just remain mute spectators to this disgusting spectacle. Why have we become so immune to Mamta's "irresponsible politics"? Why is the media not even demanding that Mamta Banerjee resign from her post? Shouldn't the Prime Minister sack her? What kind of a country tolerates a cabinet minister's open support to Maoists, when the Prime Minister of the country himself describes them as the "gravest internal security threat to this country"? By plain common sense, doesn't that make Mamta a threat too?

Shivraj Patil had a murderous stint as Home Minister in UPA 1.0. Now, we have a cabinet minister openly sliding with murderers. Both times the Prime Minister was silent. How much more longer will this facade go on?