Attack on Mollah a brutal gang-rape of democracy: CPI-M

Terming the attack against its leader Abdur Rezzak Mollah and party activists in Kolkata as 'a brutal gang-rape of democracy', the Communist Party of India-Marxist accused Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee of directing the state police to arrest the victims instead of the perpetrators of violence.

"Instead of taking any action on those who mounted such a grievous attack, the state police under directions from the Trinamool Congress chief are arresting those who are victims of this attack. The perpetrators move around scot-free while the victims are being arrested under false charges," senior CPI-M leader Sitaram Yechury said.

Maintaining that 'a brutal gang-rape of democracy took place in Bengal on Tuesday', he referred to the 'semi-fascist terror' in the early 1970s in which several Left activists were killed and said 'those who forget this history and seek a similar repetition, will meet the same fate – comprehensive political defeat at the hands of the people."

In an editorial in the forthcoming issue of CPI-M organ 'People's Democracy', Yechury said Mollah has been the target of the TMC since he was the Land Reforms Minister in the previous Left Front government.

The erstwhile government's implementation of land reforms 'has deprived many a former landlord of their illegally held land above the ceiling. These sections have been systematically undoing the gains of the poor farmer and agricultural labour as a result of land reforms'.

"Nearly 3,500 such farmers are not been allowed to cultivate their own land amounting to nearly 10,000 acres. 27,283 patta holders and bargadars who were given land legally under the land reforms have been evicted in an area of nearly 10,000 acres," he said.

Asserting that the people of Bengal have 'never bowed in the face of such attacks', he said 'the politics of violence and terror, the current aggressive phase unleashed to

terrorise people into submission in the forthcoming Panchayat elections in the state, will be defeated politically in a democratic manner'.