Bombs and Bengal

Youths joke that when the azaan or call for prayers is given, bomb go off in the background!

 

This is the story of bombs and Bengal.

 

It is clear that the theatre of bombs in Bengal is set in Burdwan, Nadia, Birbhum and Murshidabad. These have for long been one of the most volatile regions in the state, the site of pitched political turf wars and extortion rackets.

 

This 100-sq-km agrarian and semi-industrial belt, hemmed in by a number of Jharkhand districts, has a large number of crime syndicates that deal in sand quarrying, stone crushery and illegal mining.

The explosives and the bombs that are crudely put together here don’t have to travel far either to find a market. Statistics show that Burdwan, Birbhum and Murshidabad account for a large number of cases in which explosives were used. For example, between January 2012 and June 2014, Burdwan recorded 357 incidents involving explosives. Birbhum had 264 such cases and Murshidabad 600.

 

Besides, this region abuts Junglemahal, the Maoist areas spread across Purulia, Bankura and West Midnapore  which witnessed large-scale violence from 2008 to 2012. During those troubled years, the region saw the use of improvised ‘multi-dimensional mines’ that were made out of huge iron pipes.

 

The bomb-making units in Purbasthali, Mongalkot, Raina and Ausgram in Burdwan; Beldanga and Lalgola in Berhampore; Karimpur in Nadia; and villages in Birbhum cater to this ready market.

 

The seizures in this belt have included bombs, IEDs, gelatin sticks, powder-gel and gunpowder — some of the explosives that were seized at the Burdwan house after the October 2 blast.

 

Even in the days immediately after the blast at the Burdwan house, at least half-a-dozen blasts took place in the Khagragarh locality, apparently when the bomb-making units were hastily shifting to safer places fearing NIA raids. Similar, smaller explosions took place in other parts of the region, but these do not seem to have come under the scanner of the investigators.

 

The bombs made in Burdwan are being sent to destinations in Bangladesh, which would mean that Burdwan was “exporting terror”. Links between Jamait-e-Islami Bangladesh and various other Jamait outfits in Bangladesh and West Bengal are well known.

 

The NIA investigation has, so far, not reached the end of this supply chain.