Kolkata cops identify 12 ‘outsiders’ from TV grab

Dwaipayan Ghosh,TNN | Sep 20, 2014, KOLKATA: A day after police commissioner Surajit Kar Purkayastha claimed presence of 'outsiders' inside Jadavpur University campus during the fracas on Tuesday night, investigators are believed to have indentified 12 of them from CCTV footages.

"We have identified some of the outsiders. They were involved in the Baker Lab brawl at Presidency a couple of years ago. These faces are different from the present batch of Presidency students," said a source.

"We had been asking the students to allow some of us to get inside Aurobindo Bhawan on September 16 night around 9pm. They finally relented %but then we saw the outsiders calling out JU student leaders for consultation.

Finally, only two IPS officers %were let through and they were asked to ensure certain demands that no VC could ever accept. We immediately knew that bigger minds were involved," said an officer.

According to sources, among those present were a host of leaders from the extreme left-leaning USDF along with the more mainstream DSF and AISA. "These USDF sympathizers have no role on the campus. We are now trying to gain more information on what they were up to that night. The moment we entered campus, we found text messages and frantic calls asking for more students to join in. We fail to understand why a history lecturer from a college in Amherst Street was camping so late on the Jadavpur campus," added another officer.

Sources said, among the 'outsiders' being probed are Bibshawan Basu and Soumya Mondal, the duo reportedly having links with USDF. But the question is: Are they being made scapegoats?

As the Maoists try to spread their network to urban areas yet again, JU and Presidency in fact are not the only institutions they are tapping, claim sources. According to security agencies, youngsters studying at colleges in Howrah and Hooghly are also their target. The arrested Maoists over time have told the police that a number of their cadres have moved into the outskirts of Kolkata for setting up urban bases. They stay in comfortably furnished, rented houses in areas such as Rajarhat, Baguiati, Uluberia and central Kolkata. "We have traced some of the rented houses where the Maoists took shelter. The monthly rent of such a house is as high as Rs 10,000 per month," said one of the investigators.

From their bases in the city, senior Maoist leaders regularly visit the JU campus, with apparently no surveillance. In August 2010, for instance, Maoist ideologue Vara Vara Rao held a meeting with the students. The authorities later admitted that they had no knowledge of the event.

The cops did not comment on certain men, passed off as non-teaching staffers, who found their way in the melee, and later, allegedly attacked the students. "Instead of the witch-hunt, can the cops really identify the outsiders? If they are true to their job, they will find many Trinamool-backed men there," said a Fetsu member.