West Bengal CM has instructed the CIF to reactivate itself
Wednesday, 9th September 2020
In response to the news of alleged and sudden insurgency activities in the state of West Bengal across the last few weeks, West Bengal CM, Mamata Bannerjee has ordered the top brass of the West Bengal police to reactivate and re-strengthen the Counter Intelligence Force (CIF) that had been constituted nearly a decade back for combating the Maoist activities in West Bengal. The CM has also ordered the strengthening of the special task force (STF) for the same reason.
Mamata Banerjee has also asked the Director General of police for the submission of a report on this alleged insurgency acts in certain districts falling in the state’s western part that, once upon a time, happened to be the key hotbed of the Maoists.
“The DGP had visited Belpahari. I would ask him to submit a report. I want to know who all are behind this,” said Mamata Banerjee.
On the 5th of September, Virendra, the West Bengal DGP, had reviewed the security in few of the state’s western districts including the Belpahari village in the Jhargram district that had been, once upon a time, a hotbed for the subversive activities undertaken by members of the Maoist group until the year 2011.
The West Bengal police chief had visited Jhargram as well as West Midnapore districts of the state recently and had conducted a meeting with the various IPS officers for reviewing a couple of stray yet suspicious incidents that had occurred in the state of late.
On the 15th of August, near about a dozen posters that were hand-written, were recovered from some of the villages in vicinity to the Bhulabheda forest belt. The posters had few instructions for the public. People were asked to observe the country’s Independence Day as Black Day or ‘kala divas’. On the 4th of September again a couple of such hand -written posters came to be recovered from the Belpahari region.
“Some people had even tried to kill Manoj Verma, the commissioner of Barrackpore. Had we not seen the video we wouldn’t have come to know,” said Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday at the West Bengal secretariat.
Verma had been the counter insurgency force’s superintendant in the November of 2011, when the most prominent Maoist leader Kishenji was shot down dead.
“The special task force is an important wing. We need to gear that up. The CIF was set up to tackle Maoists when they were active. I would ask Ajoy Nanda (a senior IPS officer) to work on the CIF and reactivate it once again,” Mamata Banerjee said.
However, the CM was quick enough to mention that all of these alleged Maoist turbulences and news pointing out that the destructive insurgents were again regrouping are actually staged and thus, the “truth would come out soon”.
Earlier in the month of August, Governor of West Bengal, Jagdeep Dhankhar had drop a cue stating that the Maoists could possibly be regrouping soon.
Source: Hindustan Times