was a typical and good policeman. He followed his orders meticulously and did not lose his sleep over the thunderclouds that had started gathering around him. Both he and his wife were very nice to me and more often than not I was their houseguest. I must thank the couple for arranging my pre-marriage meetings with Sunanda, the daughter of the mighty DIG, who had by then consented to be a part of my dream.
I accompanied Deepak to almost all the heinous crime scenes and learnt the essentials of forensic techniques and the intricate details of writing case diary, manipulation of general diaries and meticulous investigation process. The other trick that he taught was the methodical inspection of police station. Deepak was not a genius but he had in him the ingredients of an incisive investigator. He taught me the benefits of patience and examining a given clue over and over again. Repeat analysis and examination, he emphasised always resulted in better understanding of any situation.
But he did not like my dual approach to any given problem and issue. He never agreed with me that a given situation should be immersed in the concoction of conflicting ideas with a view to arriving at a perfect solution. There were no quarrelling squirrels inside his mind. He strictly followed the Police Regulation Bengal (PRB), the Vedas for the Bengal police officers. He never did anything beyond the Indian Penal Code, Criminal Procedure Code, Indian Evidence Act, Police Act, and the Police Regulation Bengal. The only time he ignored the dictates of the books when he was asked to do so by his immediate superior. I appreciated the disciplined policeman in him, though I did not like the absence of human touch, the subtle touch of conscience.
*
Naksalbari was a sleepy town on the borders of Bihar and Nepal. With its sprawling tea gardens, rice producing alluvial land and rich forest resources Naksalbari was strategically important. Tentulia in East Pakistan wasn’t far away from the centre of Naksalbari market. Nevertheless, common border with Nepal added more vulnerability to it.
A queer mixture of people inhabited the area. The majority of the tea garden labourers were Santhal, Oraon, Munda and Ho with liberal sprinkling of Nepalis. The upper caste Bengalis were jotedars (landed gentry), forest contractors or traders. The lower caste Bengalis mostly tilled the lands of the jotedars and tea estate lands on barga (crop sharing) system. The Bengali migrants from East Pakistan overwhelmed the original inhabitants, the Coch, Mech, Bodo, Toto and Rajbangshi population. Economically they were the worst hit. Suffering from political and economic neglect the original inhabitants, the sons of the soil, they had nowhere to go. Much later these people were infected by the ambience of insurgency in Assam and had started championing the cause of Kamtapuri, a separate homeland for the aboriginals of the region. By 1995, Kampatapuri movement had drawn the attention of the Inter Services Intelligence of Pakistan and the Directorate of Forces Intelligence of Bangladesh.
Even in 1965, a huge floating population from Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, and Rajasthan had started spreading their economic tentacles in the area taking advantage of political and economic neglect by the Bengali ‘bhadralok’ politicians of Calcutta. It was palpably clear that a vital part of Bengal was very fast losing its Bengali and aboriginal characters.
The Bengali refugees from East Pakistan had no fixed vocation. They grabbed anything they could. The Biharis were mainly related to the legal and illegal exploitation of the forest resources, smuggling between India and Nepal and some of them had started taking up military contracts at Baghdogra, Siliguri and Binnaguri. The Punjabi population was entrenched in the transport sector.
The aboriginals of the land were nowhere in the economic and political map of the area. They were mostly landless and jobless. A few families tended
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