Marichjhapi massacre

Incident

Once the Left Front came to power in 1977, the refugees from Dandakaranya camps started to return to independent Bangladesh in large numbers. The refugees were approximately 136,000 in numbers and the Left Front government identified 247,000 acres of readily reclaimable lands mostly in the Sundarban area (Ganges Delta) for the resettlement of these agriculturist refugees, originally from East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). Initially the government approved and actively encouraged voluntary resettlement of the identified lands by the refugees. Significant number of the refugees ended up also settling in unauthorised lands and were usually allowed to, around 40,000 refugees went to Hasnabad, Hingalganj and Geonkhali, and about 15,000 settling in the small island of Marichjhapi (renamed by them as "Netaji Nagar"), a protected place under Reserve Forest Act. But in some time the Left Front had shifted its policy on refugee settling, taking a stance that the refugees were not just the citizens of West Bengal but of India and the rest of the country needed to take responsibility as well.

In Marichjhapi, they attained self-sufficiency in fishing for food and had built schools and clinics on their own but had to travel to nearby Islands for obtaining grain and clean drinking water. One of the settlers later claims that there were only shrubs on the island when they came. The government considered the refugee settlements an unauthorized occupation of a reserved forest land and a report was published that a subsequent chain of migrations could result in a severe ecological disaster. They began pressuring the refugees to vacate.

On 24 January 1979, the Government of West Bengal clamped prohibitory orders under Section 144 of the CrPC around the island of Marichjhapi. Thirty police ferries were brought in for the eviction and they started patrolling the island, pressurising the settlers. Eyewitness accounts say that on 31 January, the police opened fire on the Hindu refugees who settled on the island, when the refugees allegedly attacked a police camp with traditional weapons. The police and the district administration started a complete blockade. It prevented access to food and clean drinking water for the residents of the island. Many of them ended up consuming contaminated water resulting in at least a few dozen deaths. Ananda Marga, a religious organisation, is also suspected to have had a hand in sparking the violence, the organization was active in the region, allegedly involved in smuggling and would frequently get into conflict with the native tribal community. After 15 days, the Calcutta High Court ruled that "The supply of drinking water, essential food items and medicines as well as the passage of doctors must be allowed to Marichjhapi".

Some of the refugees were forcibly relocated to Dandakaranya while the rest were escorted in police launches to Hasnabad. Some of them were settled in Marichjhapi Colony near Barasat while others rehabilitated themselves in the shanties near railway tracks in Sealdah. Some of them resettled themselves in Hingalganj, Canning and nearby areas.

The official toll was at first two. The incident led to severe criticism of the government from the media, the opposition and from within members of the Left Front coalition. The demand for a formal investigation into the eviction was nevertheless denied by the government, with Basu convinced that it was greatly exaggerated by the media. Later, the official figure put the deaths at 2 to 8, considered to be a significant under-estimation. The numbers from independent investigations are considered unreliable, since there is no formal proof either way.

In popular culture

Chorki made a web series named Feu inspired by this incident.