The Communist Party of India(Marxist) on Friday demanded a judicial probe into the Purulia arms-drop case to uncover the network responsible for the incident.
“The Purulia arms-drop in December 1995 was one of the most serious instances of assault on the country's sovereignty. The investigations and the court trial proved that the arms were meant for the Ananda Marg, which was planning to use it to foment violence to destabilise the Left Front government,” the CPI(M) Polit Bureau said in a statement in the wake of an interview by Niels Christian Nielsan alias Kim Davy, the absconder in the case.
The party said the judicial inquiry should be held by a sitting judge of the Supreme Court.
Addressing a press conference here, party general secretary Prakash Karat said the revelations by Davy and Peter Bleach, who was sentenced in the case, raised new questions and necessitated a fresh inquiry.
Mr. Karat said both Nielsen and Bleach made some serious charges of connivance by certain authorities in the air-drop plan and the cover up later.
He said the party believed that the then Central government was “grossly negligent” in dealing with British intelligence information about the arms-drop, “but are now revising our view.”
“We are not interested in scoring political points but when information was available why was the Centre not able to act and the main conspirator has still not been extradited …the government has been tardy in getting him extradited…” the CPI(M) leader said.
The Centre sent the arms-drop information to the State government by registered post and it arrived one week after the incident, Mr. Karat said, adding that Davy gave specific details of how he had escaped from the Mumbai airport and reached Nepal.
Mr. Karat said Davy named Pappu Yadav, an MP then, as the one who assisted him and that people of Purulia saw Mr. Yadav there soon after the arms-drop.
He said Mr. Yadav, who is in jail serving a life sentence for the murder of CPI(M) MLA Ajit Sarkar, should be interrogated and the trail by which Kim Davy escaped from the country should be uncovered and the persons responsible brought to book.
The existence of the Left Front government in West Bengal has been anathema to many domestic and international forces, he said, adding that even today, the spectre of violence in the form of Maoists is being used to destabilise the Left Front.
‘Killing fields'
“Even the Union Home Minister recently talked of the ‘killing fields' in West Bengal and blamed the CPI(M) for them. On the other hand, Maoist violence is being aided and supported by the Trinamool Congress, which is part of the Congress-led government at the Centre.”
