People in Sandeshkhali in Bengal’s North 24-Parganas district know him by various names; Shahjahan, Sheikh Shahjahan. Then, comes the moniker Gabbar and, finally, Bhai, who would do anything that brings dread to women and their husbands. He can make roads disappear, and men squirm and crawl. The Trinamool Congress strongman and ‘election manager’ has, however, disappeared since his henchmen attacked Enforcement Directorate officers who came knocking at his door on January 5 in a foodgrain irregularities case that has landed the state’s former food and supplies minister Jyotipriya Mallick in jail.
The sleepy Sandeshkhali is around 70 km from Kolkata. Revelation about the dark underbelly ruled by the local satrap of the ruling party surfaced when women hit the streets with horrid tales of exploitation. These demonstrations brought forth the politics of polarisation too as the area is close to the Bangladesh border. Sandeshkhali today is the epicentre of women’s resistance movement.
Back in 2004, things were different. Shahjahan was a union leader in brick kilns in an area located in the lower Gangetic delta, a part of the Ichhamati-Raimangal plain, crisscrossed by rivers and creeks. In the next decade, the foot soldier of a CPM-affiliated union emerged as a strongman of the area populated by fishermen, farmers and daily wagers.
He changed his colours with the change of guard in the state in 2011. The burly 47-year-old is an unstoppable functionary of the ruling TMC. The women’s allegations against him and his two aides — Shibaprasad Hazra and Uttam Sardar — have led homemakers and young girls to hit the streets with sticks and brooms. Only a few months ago, these protestors feared even eye contact with the men they simply hated.
The allegations are egregious: Asking women to attend the ‘party meeting’ at midnight; forcing them to ride pillion on motorcycles driven by TMC netas, ordering homemakers to prepare ‘pitha’ (rice cake, which is a traditional Bengali food in winters) at midnight; and grabbing tribal land for setting up fisheries.
Refusal to attend midnight meetings would result in unexplainable torture. “Our husbands would have to face the consequences. They would have to go to their dens and get beaten up with the wooden butt of a spade,” said a woman. And whenever they went to the police, the law keepers told them to go to Shahjahan for solutions.
Politically, Shahjahan has seen everything that West Bengal has had to offer since the days of the Left. He was with the Left Front constituent RSP and later moved to the CPM. Even when he was a CPM member, he began building up links with the TMC in 2009, after the party made inroads into the rural pockets in the 2008 panchayat polls.
He caught the TMC leadership’s attention and drew close to then minister Mallick for his “skill in conducting” elections. In the 2018 panchayat elections, he was elected as a member of the North 24-Paraganas zilla parishad, the highest tier of the panchayat raj system.
And then land grabbing peaked. Individuals were threatened and Shahjahan and his men went to the extent of changing the land map of the revenue department. “There was a panchayat road with a drinking water line between two fisheries. One morning, the road disappeared. His men dug up the road and erased it from the map to merge the two fisheries,” said a villager.
The stir has caught the national attention. Governor CV Ananda Bose and National Commission for Women members have visited the area that remains inaccessible to opposition parties. The police have not yet allowed a BJP fact-finding team, and CPM and Congress delegations have returned. But former CPM MLA Nirapada Sardar was arrested for instigating stir.
The TMC is facing the most serious protests in Sandeshkhali since it assumed power in 2011. The question is, why is the ruling dispensation solidly backing the fugitive. Is it because of vote bank politics as Basirhat Lok Sabha constituency has a substantial minority population?
In the assembly, Mamata Banerjee, the lone woman CM in the country, has held RSS, not Shahjahan, responsible for the unrest. “First target is Shahjahan. Targeting him, ED entered there. Then tribals and minorities were provoked to fight each other. BSF and other agencies are being used to win elections,” she said.
Despite national outcry, Sandeshkhali’s Gabbar remains unscathed, untouched.
