Tea threat mail worry

TT, Oct. 13: A mail sent from the account of a Goodricke tea garden has threatened that the Dooars Branch of the Indian Tea Association, which is the biggest organisation of estate owners, should leave the area.

The garden from whose account the email was sent is Lakkhipara tea estate, which is run by Goodricke, which has 11 other gardens in the Dooars.

Goodricke chairman A.N. Singh said: "We are suspecting it (the account) has been hacked by one of our clerical staff as some of them have the password to maintain the email account. However, we have already changed the password."

S. Guha Thakurta, the tea association's secretary, said that on October 9 "we had issued a clarification on the bonus payment and mailed it to all our member gardens. On October 10, the manager of Lakkhipara Tea Estate, where there had been constant demonstrations over wage payment the previous day (October 9), met me and informed about the anonymous mail sent from the official email of the garden."

The mail, which had Hindi words written in Roman script, read: " Mazdor ko petme lath marnewalla awor KLO/ALFA/GNLF ki disha me dhakelnewalla dalal dbita tum ko Dooars chhorna hoga.... Workers of Tea Industry (DBITA, which is acting against the interests of workers and shoving them towards extremist outfits KLO/ALFA/GNLF will have to quit Dooars)."

As the mail was sent using the chain of the DBITA's earlier mail, the threat went to all the gardens to which the association had sent its circular.

Tea workers in Lakkhipara wanted the bonus at the rate of 20 per cent of the salary in one go, not in a staggered manner - 15 per cent now and 5 per cent before Christmas - as settled during the bonus agreement.

A senior police officer of Jalpaiguri said there was "no question of taking it (the threat) lightly. Even if it is a prank, it is no less serious an offence. Also, the official email of a tea group has been used, which means either those who know the password have done it or have passed it on to those who sent the mail. Further, there are equal chances that the email (account) might have been hacked into."

Tez Kumar Toppo, a leader of the Progressive Tea Workers' Union, said such threatening mails would adversely affect tea industry. "Such threatening mails and letters were sent to tea estates in Assam and it badly hit the industry there. Driven by insecurity, many planters and managerial staff left tea estates," Toppo said. "Police should investigate and arrest these people."

Toppo's union is backed by the Akhil Bharatiya Adivasi Vikas Parishad, which has unions in several Dooars tea gardens.

Joseph Munda, the Congress MLA of Nagrakata, said that a few months back, "suspected Maoist posters were put up at Metelli Tea Estate (in Jalpaiguri district). Now, such a threatening mail has been sent to the DBITA and to the tea estates. We have never heard such threats being issued to planters in the Dooars. It is high time the police and intelligence officers took steps."

Workers in many gardens in the Dooars have been agitating over the Puja bonus for the past few days. Many want the entire bonus to be paid in one go. Some garden owners have also said they cannot pay a bonus at the rate of 20 per cent of the labourer's salary, so the staff should accept a lower percentage.