A month after Union home minister Amit Shah gave police forces a two-year deadline to eliminate left-wing extremism across India, NIA sleuths on Tuesday morning raided the houses of well known activists across West Bengal. 

Groundxero | October 1, 2024

National Investigation Agency (NIA) officials along with the Special Task Force (STF) of the West Bengal Police conducted multiple raids across 12 locations across different parts of West Bengal in the early morning on Tuesday (October 1). Raids were carried out at Netaji Nagar in Kolkata, Panihati, Barrackpore, and Sodepur in the outskirts of Kolkata, Asansol and several other places in West Bengal. 

NIA sleuths raided the houses of political activists working on issues of civil rights, workers’ rights, women’s rights, students’ issues, independent journalists and a filmmaker. Those who were subjected to raids are Abhijnan Sarkar (activist and independent film-maker), Prasenjit Chakraborty (Freelance Journalist), Sipra Chakraborty (activist), Sudipta Pal (leader of ECL Contract Workers Union), Jayanta Ghosh (activist), Bipasa Sarkar (activist), Siddheswar Biswas (member of CRPP), Somnath Bera (activist), Suddhyasatya Ray (student activist) and Gour Majumdar (activist).

The 12 premises searched by the NIA’s Ranchi wing are reportedly linked to activists, who have been accused by the agency of being supporters of the banned CPI (Maoist), and related to a case lodged by the agency in 2022 linked to an alleged Maoist conspiracy to propagate left-wing extremism in northern and eastern India. After the raids, the NIA said in a statement, “The agency searched multiple locations in various districts of West Bengal over a CPI (Maoist) conspiracy to revive its presence in the eastern region of the country.”

During the raids, the NIA has seized all personal electronic devices like mobile phones, laptops of the individuals whose houses were raided. Certain books, magazines, and other legally printed literature were also taken away by the sleuths. As per the information received so far, many of them have also been served a notice to visit the NIA’s Ranchi office to face interrogation in the upcoming couple of weeks.

The raids on activists come a month after Union home minister Amit Shah gave police forces a two-year deadline to eliminate left-wing extremism across India. Condemning the NIA’s action, the Association for Protection of Democratic Rights (APDR) said the raids at the houses of activists well known for their dissenting voices are nothing but “state repression on dissent.” The human rights group called upon the people of West Bengal to rise in protest, demanding a full stop to these fearful NIA raids on dissenting voices. It reiterated its demand of disbanding the unconstitutional NIA.

Asansol Civil Rights Association, Durgapur Gana Adhikar Manch, NTUI, AICCTU, Center for Struggling Trade Unions, ECL Contract Workers Rights Union in a statement said “We are strongly opposed to these searches by the NIA and this state terror on the activists of the mass movement. We feel that all these attacks are a bare attack on democratic rights and an attempt to stifle voices.” They demanded a stop to this kind of campaign and stressed the need to protect the democratic rights of all political workers.

Committee for the Release of Political Prisoners (CRPP – West Bengal) called on the people to unite against the NIA crackdown on the pro-democratic civil society in West Bengal. In a press statement CRPP said “We suspect that these raids in West Bengal are part of a larger game plan; one that is similar to the infamous Bhima Koregaon case. Given the NIA’s notoriety regarding the BK-16 case, one cannot rule out the possibility that the state might tamper with the seized electronic devices and implant false evidence to show the activists’ link with the Maoist organisation. We strongly condemn this conspiracy concocted by the NIA to repress all kinds of pro-people political activism and dissent.”

The statement added that the NIA is like the Gestapo force of the anti-people BJP-RSS-led Central Government and it is duty of all democratic-minded people to raise their voices immediately against this fascist agency which is all up in arms against the civil society in India and views it as the new enemy frontier for waging war.