Report

Patna 22 August 2023

A team of Insaf Manch and CPIML visited the family of Md. Shaad, Imam of the Masjid in Gurgaon who was murdered by Bajarang Dal rioters recently. Another team went to Maniadih in Nanpur block of Sitamarhi district to meet his family. The team also went to Parbatta village in Madhubani district to meet the family of Md. Asgar who was killed by a fanatic Modi supporter RPF jawan on a train to Mumbai.

This year again BJP tried to instigate communal riots in East and West Champaran districts on the day of Nag Panchami. On 21 August rioting was engineered in Bagaha of West Champaran by the Sangh outfits in the name of religious procession while a similar attempt was made in Papra of East Champaran the same day. Virendra Gupta, CPIML MLA from Sikta, went to affected areas with a team for investigation. He said this was an organised and premeditated riot for which the preparations were going on for many months.

On August 2nd, the Supreme Court directed states and police authorities to “ensure there’s no hate speech” and to take strict actions and preventive measures to curb hate speech incidents. Later on August 11th, the Apex Court asked the Centre to constitute a committee to look into the cases of hate speech.

The All India People’s Forum (AIPF) organised a Seminar in Patna on 12 August on ‘75 years of Freedom: Challenges before the Country’. This was addressed by Prof. Shamshul Islam from Delhi, Dr. Ram Puniyani from Mumbai, CPIML General Secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya, leader of Congress legislative group in Bihar Dr. Shakil Ahmad Khan, ex-speaker of Bihar Assembly Uday Narayan Chaudhary, AIPWA General Secretary Mina Tiwari and presided over by Ghalib. The seminar was conducted by AIPF leader Kamlesh Sharma, while Pankaj Shwetabh, Prof.

13 August. Imphal

The All India Students Association (AISA) held its 10th National Conference at a time when the people of India, and students in particular, have been consistently resisting the fascist onslaught of the Narendra Modi regime for the past nine years. The two-day national conference was inaugurated at the Purbashree Auditorium, Bidhannagar (Kolkata) with paying homage to the departed leaders and martyrs.

Yogi’s Mirzapur police in Lalganj forcibly cremated a dalit youth who was allegedly murdered, without even lodging a FIR under relevant sections. The dead body of Dharmraj was found on 21 July outside his village Sahira with visible torture marks but the police declared it a case of suicide and burnt the body. The body was not handed over to the family after the postmortem. Family members gave a written application for lodging an FIR along with the names of the accused which was ignored.

Thousands of Adivasis people assembled at the district headquarter in Palghar on 9 August to celebrate Indigenous People’s Day and to raise concerns on many of their problems and unresolved issues. While this was a great display of adivasi culture and society, the people gathered forcefully raised their voice against the continuing violence against Kuki and other communities in Manipur.

The 31-day long indefinite strike of ASHA workers in Bihar ended on 12 August with an agreement with the state government for an increase in the monthly payment by Rs. 1500 per month and renaming the payment as Honorarium which so far was called as the ‘reward’ (Paritoshik).

On August 3, 2023, two CPIML fact finding teams visited Nuh and surrounding areas in Haryana that witnessed intense communal provocation and violence by right-wing groups on July 31, 2023. One team comprising Prem Singh Gahlawat, Ravi Rai, Shweta Raj, Akash Bhattacharya and Arun met members of Muslim and Hindu communities in Nuh (Mewat), Sohna (Gurgaon), and looked to understand the sequence of events that led to the current ground situation.