Morcha hits back with shutdown call- Hills caught off guard

April 9: The Gorkha Janmukti Morcha reacted swiftly to the clash in Siliguri by shutting down the hills with a bandh that will continue till 6am on Friday.

In Darjeeling, posters announcing the shutdown appeared around 2.30pm, giving people a 30-minute window to get things arranged before the bandh began at 3pm. [Inset: An injured policeman in Siliguri]

Morcha supporters in Kalimpong were slower off the mark. Around 4pm, following a directive from the party central committee, they went around the town in vehicles fitted with loudspeakers to announce the shutdown.

Most shops downed shutters almost immediately and vehicles stayed off the road. Residents had to scurry to do some shopping, while tourists either caught the last cars out of the hills, or got ready to spend a couple of days in their hotel rooms.

GJM condemns Darjeeling More Incident

To,
Shri Gopal Krishna Gandhi
His Excellency the Governor of West Bengal
Raj Bhawan
Kolkata

Your Excellency,

We condemn in the strongest terms the recent atrocities perpetrated by the Government of West Bengal on the 9th April 2008 at Siliguri with the help of both the State police and bureaucracy on the one hand and the party cadres of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) on the other. The Government does not seem to have learnt a single lesson from the Nandigram experience and is instead committed to a path of sectarian violence and State sponsored terrorism.

On the 9th of April 2008 the Bharatiya Gorkha Bhut Purva Sainik Morcha, an organisation comprising of decorated, elderly and respected ex-soldiers, organised a peaceful march in support of the demand for a separate state of Gorkhaland. As the procession was wending its way towards the city centre it was forcibly stopped by police barricade at Darjeeling Mor. The marchers made their peaceful intentions clear to the authorities and sat down in a non-violent demonstration in front of the barricade to protest the high-handed and illegal manner in which they were blocked. Eleven innocent GJM supporters have been put behind the bars on false allegation.

While the Darjeeling district bureaucracy looked on with approval, the marchers were showered with missiles and stones from the nearby buildings where cadres of the CPI (M) and DYFI were already waiting in ambush. After a moment the police personnel, in a cowardly act of criminality, also joined the fray and began to pelt the elderly marchers with stones. Television footage and media also bear these facts out. Finally, after discharging tear-gas shells, the police moved in with canes and began to mercilessly beat these old and unarmed demonstrators causing grievous injuries to scores of the people assembled there. An eighty-year-old ex-serviceman’s leg was broken and numerous other retired persons received severe head and bodily injuries.

To compound the matter, the authorities have rounded up a number of persons and arrested them on false charges in order to vilify the campaign and to justify their actions. Even previously, cadres of the CPI (M) were unleashed upon our party office which was mercilessly ransacked one day before the above incident. It is needless to add that the perpetrators are still at large, moving about with impunity under the very nose of the police.

At Last! Justice in the Offing for a Gorkha Girl

Playing pranks has been a legitimate culture on April. April fool is what everyone plays around, but for Barsha Chettri from Kurseong, Darjeeling it was not a prank call nor a common jest but the reality when she received an alert caller from her Granny. At broad day light she was mentally not prepared for any prank call, sms or joke.

Around noon her room was billowing in smoke and fire. An alert call from her Granny made her rush back home to see her belongings lay in heap of cinders and ash. No one was there to dooze the fire. The cause of the fire was unknown.

However, interventions and investigations made it clear that the fire was caused due to the negligence of her neighborhood who at that time was busy renovating their house using welding machine. Sparks of the weilding rod had broken apart the window pane and ignited her clothes that caught fire and finally all her belongings in heap of cinders and ash.

The gruesome fact is that, all her belongings were presented to her last December when she was tied in a knot with Bhasker Allay.

She could not run around for help (as her husband is in London). There were no Gorkha speaking people around her. She lost consciousness and finally one of her friend rang Gorkha Welfare Society, Delhi.