SUSANTA GHOSH GETS BAIL AT SUPREME COURT

SUSANTA GHOSH BAIL AT SC
A CONSPIRATORIAL MOVE GRINDS TO A HALT

A heinous plot hatched by the Trinamul Congress-led coalition government in Bengal has been put on embarrassing hold—for the Bengal government. CPI (M) leader and former minister in the Left Front government, Susanta Ghosh was bailed out at the Supreme Court on 3 February, the division bench accepting the credence of Susanta’s bail petition in the so-called ‘skeleton scandal, of Benachapra in Midnapore west.

The lawyers appearing for the state government had been quite ferocious in their opposition to any bail being handed over. Their moves were left helpless in the air as the basil petition was granted. Yes, it is a conditional and interim bail, but a bail out nevertheless, honour and integrity of the Party restored in this particular case.

In a short but meaningful statement, Bengal secretary of the CPI (M) Biman Basu said that the Party was content that Susanta had been bailed out at the Supreme Court where his appeal had been pending. The Bengal government in vengeance had lined up a variety of ‘charges’ in order to harass Susanta and their desperation was apparent. The concerned quarters should draw a lesson from this interim bail.

Central committee member of the CPI (M) and leader of the opposition in the Bengal Assembly, Dr Surjya Kanta Mishra put it succinctly: a conspiracy has been brutally unmasked, the bail out is a development that would give the Party satisfaction. Dr Mishra continued to argue that the event was but a single step in a long and arduous struggle that was going on.

The CPI (M) leader pointed out that in an unprecedented move, the present Bengal government had repeatedly and as it appeared successfully opposed bail petitions – and the truth had to come out that the Bengal government was driven by a vengeful outlook in its rigorous pursuance of what purported to be a ‘case.’ The SC bail out reflected the understanding of the CPI (M) that the entire affair had been an act of vengefulness.

State secretariat member of the CPI (M) Dipak Sarkar who also heads the Midnapore west unit of the Party, while expressing his reaction to the SC verdict, pointed out that the constituency that had elected Susanta Ghosh were being deprived of their MLA and looked forward to the CPI (M) leader taking up the people’s cause once more with vigour in and out the Assembly. Dipak Sarkar hoped that all anti-people conspiracies would face a wide exposé and among the masses.

What had transpired? Simply put, the move initiated by the Trinamul Congress chieftains and their running mates was this: put in a bad name for a popular CPI (M) leader, and get him taken into custody on what now appears to have been post facto, manufactured charges lined up and in a tutored fashion by Trinamul Congress goons who appeared in the willing media as ‘witnesses’ to alleged killings that had supposedly taken place.

The recent extraction from the soil of a sudden spate of ‘skeletal remains’ at a place near which Susanta has had his ancestral residence was considered as ‘proof’ enough to lodge a criminal case under section 304A (a cognizable, non-bailable charge) of the IPC and very soon charges of other, equally grave nature, including one under the arms act, was piled on the CPI (M) leader and his police custody and later jail custody kept casting a lengthening shadow over the prospects of his ever coming out of incarceration and endless interrogation not excluding we suppose what is commonly called the ‘third degree’ method.

Responding to the bail out of her husband and comrade, Susanta, wife Karuna Banerjee, herself a Party leader, said that the struggle against the rights of the masses would continue apace and Susanta would soon take his rightful place in the struggle that would burgeon to massive proportions in the days to come.