சிபிஎம் குண்டு வீச்சில் 4 வயது குழந்தை பலி- வங்காள போலீஸ் திருப்தி

சிபிஎம் குண்டு வீச்சில் 4 வயது குழந்தை பலி- வங்காள போலீஸ் திருப்தி
4-year-old blown up at home in poll raid
- Overall situation ‘pleasant surprise’: Cop
OUR BUREAU
May 19: A bomb ripped apart four-year-old Mili Khatoon while she was playing in the shade of the verandah, too young to realise that even homes are unsafe when panchayat polls are held in Bengal’s Murshidabad.

Around 1 this afternoon, few people were outside their homes as the sun was beating down on the village in Salar, 50km from Behrampore town, where the bitter rivalry between the CPM and the Congress peaks every time there is an election.

Mili’s father Alai Sheikh, a Congress supporter, too, was inside his hut. Suddenly, a gang barged into the courtyard and started hurling bombs.

One of the bombs landed on little Mili’s stomach and exploded, killing her instantaneously. Pointing at his daughter’s body, Sheikh wailed: “They were CPM goons. They came to kill me, but got my daughter instead.”

Back in Calcutta, about 250km away, the death of Mili was reduced to another footnote to the daily dose of statistics. She was one of “six more deaths” in Murshidabad, bringing the toll over the last two days to 17 in that district alone.

Added to the seven deaths in the second phase and one in Birbhum yesterday, the fatalities in this year’s panchayat polls stand at 25, a figure the government says is lower than the 60 deaths in three days in 2003.

Such is the obsession of the administration with numbers that police said they were “pleasantly surprised” by the comparative low rate of casualties.

“It was a pleasant surprise. These elections have turned out to be far less violent than the last rural elections. We had apprehended a much worse situation,” inspector-general (law and order) Raj Kanojia said. He added that the panchayat elections have turned out to be “surprisingly less violent” compared with 2003.

It was not clear whether Kanojia was aware of the child’s death when he was speaking to reporters this evening, a few hours after Mili was blown up.

If officials did not betray any sign that they considered it inhuman a child was bombed to death, neither did the politicians.

The CPM and the Congress railed against each other through the day, saying “three of our (CPM) men” have been killed and “three of our (Congress) supporters” were “butchered by the CPM”. None had anything to say about Mili.