Date:18/06/2007 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2007/06/18/stories/2007061801931300.htm

National

Violence continues in Nandigram

Special Correspondent

The disturbances have affected the return of families living in relief camps

Return of families from relief camps affected

Outsiders fired at a relief camp where CPI(M) supporters were present

KOLKATA: Violence continued in the Nandigram area for the third successive day on Sunday. Bombs were hurled and shots fired near the Tekhali Bazaar even as leaders of the Trinamool Congress-backed Bhoomi Ucched Pratirodh Committee [BUPC] and those of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) traded charges of inciting the disturbances.

There were no casualties, according to reports reaching here.

The recent disturbances have affected the return of families, who have been living in relief camps, to their homes they had abandoned due to violence since January.

The BUPC activists were trying to disrupt the peace process and some who had returned to their homes over the past week were without shelter again, Ashok Guria, a senior district leader of the CPI(M), told The Hindu over telephone. He alleged that certain "outsiders" were in league with the BUPC and had fired shots at a relief camp where the CPI(M) supporters were sheltered.

BUPC leaders accused CPI(M) workers of firing from a brick kiln in the Khejuri area which sparked the trouble.

Expressing concern over the violence, Biman Bose, Secretary of the CPI(M) State Committee, who visited Tamluk, the Purbo Medinipur district headquarters on Saturday, said that the trouble would affect the peace process.

PTI reports:

Journalists were allegedly fired at in Kejuri. More than 25 rounds were fired and bombs hurled from a brick kiln. Police said this was done allegedly by CPI(M) cadres from a brick kiln from where 10 persons with sophisticated firearms were arrested after the March 14 police firing in which 14 persons were killed.

A PTI correspondent present at the site said five journalists travelling on two motorbikes were fired at from the `Janani' brick kiln but they jumped off their bikes and took shelter at a nearby house.

IGP (Law and Order) Raj Kanojia and IGP (Western Range) Arun Gupta, however, denied such an incident took place.

In yet another show of resistance to land acquisition, villagers clashed with the police in a bid to stop expansion of state-owned Indian Iron and Steel Company at Purushottampur in West Bengal's Burdwan district on Sunday, leaving six persons, including a policeman, injured.