In
the early hours of Bhagat Singh’s martyrdom day, 23rd March, 2014, villagers of Repura (in the Ara Lok Sabha
constituency in Bihar) found the dead body of Comrade Budhram
Paswan, Secretary of the CPIML’s Charpokhri block committee.
He had been killed the previous night, as he was returning
to the village for a meeting in preparation for the filing of
Lok Sabha nominations by CPIML candidate. His body displayed
signs of torture, indicating he had been tied up and dragged
on the ground, and that assailants had stamped on his chest
before shooting him dead. The FIR has named several well
known feudal lumpen elements of the neighbouring village,
including three men accused in the Ranveer Sena’s 1998 Nagari
Bazaar massacre.
Comrade
Budhram was one of the key activists who helped ensure that
witnesses withstood feudal terror and intimidation, and
testified in court resulting in the conviction of the
massacre accused in the Sessions Court in 2010. The
conviction was overturned by the Bihar High Court in 2013–
part of a series of such verdicts discrediting testimonies of
survivors and eyewitnesses, and overturning lower court
convictions in Ranveer Sena massacre cases. Comrade Budhram
also helped the survivors find courage and determination to
appeal against the acquittal in the Supreme Court. On 23rd
March, Ranveer Sena supporters celebrated Comrade Budhram’s
assassination, gleefully firing shots in the air. Such
celebrations underline the fact that the murder is a
political one, intended to terrorise CPI(ML) supporters with a
show of feudal muscle on the eve of an election in which the
CPI(ML) is a strong contender from the Ara seat.
Comrade
Budhram was born in Repura, and was 45 years old at the time
of his murder. He is survived by his wife, son and two
daughters. He was a graduate, and a dedicated party worker
for very long. He was first associated with the Party in the
80’s, and for the last 15 years he had been the CPI(ML)
Charpokhri Block secretary and a member of the Bhojpur
District Committee. He had led many struggles on the issues
of land struggles for the poor and landless, sharecroppers’
and farmers’ struggles, fair wages, MNREGA, prohibition,
electricity, and other issues.
Ideologues
of the Bihar Chief Minister have liked to claim that feudal
violence is a thing of the past in today’s Bihar thanks to
the ‘sushasan’ (good governance) provided in the past
nine years. Is this true? In the 80s, the feudal forces who
unleashed terror to stop dalits from casting their vote had
to contend with successful struggles by oppressed and
landless poor under the banner of CPI(ML), to actually avail
of their right to vote. The same forces, faced with CPI(ML)
victories in Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabha seats in Bhojpur in
the late 80s and early 90s, formed the Ranveer Sena and
conducted a spate of massacres with the express purpose of
terrorising the poor and checking their social and political
assertion. And now, their strategy is to eliminate leaders
and cadres, like the CPI(ML)’s Rohtas Secretary Bhaiyyaram
Yadav in 2012 and Budhram Paswan in 2014. On Independence Day
last year, the dalits of Baddi were subjected to organised
feudal violence that claimed a life, injured several and
destroyed a temple of the poet-saint Ravidas revered by the
dalits.
The
news of Com. Budhram Paswan’s murder which came in the
morning sparked off great anger among the poor, the workers,
and peasants. Angry activists blocked the roads in Nanaur
(Agiaon), Akhgaon (Koilvar), Andhari (Sahar), Hasvadih
(Piro), Jethwar and Fatehpur (Tarari), Dasarhi and Nayka Tola
(Jagdishpur), Sandesh Bazar (Sandesh Block), and many other
places.
At Ara, students, youth, and cultural activists
cancelled the scheduled seminar on the occasion of Bhagat
Singh’s martyrdom and took out a protest march against the
killing of Com. Paswan. During the march Janmat Editor Sudhir
Suman and AISA State secretary Ajit Kushwaha garlanded the
statue of Bhagat Singh and said that Com. Paswan sacrificed
his life upholding the legacy of Shaheed-e-Azam Bhagat Singh.
At Gopali Chowk the protest march took the form of a meeting
which was addressed by Dilraj Pritam, Qayamuddin and Sudhir
Suman. The speakers said that Comrade Budhram carried forward
the tradition of fighting for true democracy established by
Comrades Jagdish Master, Rameshwar Ahir and Ramnaresh Ram.
Just as in the 70s and 80s the ruling class could not
suppress the fight for rights in spite of killing people’s
leaders, so also the killers of Com. Paswan will not achieve
their unholy ends through this dastardly murder.
CPI(ML)
State Committee member Sudama Prasad, former MLAs
Chandradeep Singh and Arun Singh, RYA Vice President Aslam,
CPI-ML District secretary Jawaharlal Singh, Party candidate
Raju Yadav, AIALA leader Kamta Prasad Singh, Raghuvar Prasad
and Bindeshwari Ji visited the site of the incident and met
the grieving family members of Com. Paswan, after which the
body of Com. Budhram Paswan was brought to CPI-ML District
office, Ara. The funeral procession took place on 24th March.
All over the country, while commemorating Bhagat Singh’s
martyrdom day on 23rd March, CPI(ML) members also paid
tribute to Comrade Budhram Paswan.
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