Comrades, you are under attack

6

The name Belpahari evokes romance, reminds of a certain tribal euphoria trapped in a string of hillocks that hardly stretches beyond the college street culture of West Bengal. Did they try to kill romance? Or stifle the little erotica left in Bengali minds? Or perhaps put a little red blot on our Communist emotions? Buddhadeb Bhattacharya (Jyoti Basu's successor) could have cared less, but what happened on Sunday evening, as dusk approached on an otherwise sleepy hamlet in Belpahari in west Midnapore district, was a stark reminder that his red fortress is under attack. Lest you forget. This is how a senior intelligence official put it late on Sunday evening: "4 killed, several bodies are scattered around, the Superintendent of Police survived miraculously. There is panic in the area." There is utter panic, just to re-emphasize. The naxalites had laid a landmine in Belpahari, about 100 km from Kolkata,....