Tanmay Chatterjee KOLKATA, March 17 - It was not without reason that Mr Buddhadeb Bhattachar-jee was absent for a long period when finance minister Mr Asim Dasgupta was presenting the annual budget in the Assembly yesterday. He was receiving phone calls as reports of the CBI team arriving at Nandigram came in. Advocate-General Mr Balai Roy rushed to meet the chief minister in the evening. When Mr Bhattacharjee finally left, long after the House had got dissolved, he looked worried. The CPI-M today managed to pacify its Left Front allies and keep the government from facing a crisis on the Nandigram issue. But a section of senior CPI-M leaders, including the chief minister, have woken up to the fact that the CBI probe into the massacre could do more damage to the party than all the Opposition combined. Mr Bhattacharjee has admitted before party leaders that evidence of the involvement of %u201Ccivilians%u201D in the massacre might have been collected by the CBI team. Since the CBI is acting on the basis of a Calcutta High Court order the state police cannot carry out a parallel probe, he said. Some of the victims, it is learnt, died from injuries that they could not have sustained in police firing. There is evidence to prove that people were stabbed and even clubbed to death. Moreover, two women have alleged that they were raped when police operation was on. While the CBI probe could establish the presence of %u201Coutsiders%u201D who led the attack on Nandigram alongside the police, the state CPI-M is concerned that the identity of these outsiders may put the party in a spot. The CPI-M state leadership has officially maintained that police were attacked by Trinamul, Congress and Naxalite activists. But a section of leaders admit that these parties have little or no presence in most of the villages. The constituency is represented by a CPI legislator. %u201CSince January, local Left supporters got divided into two factions. One is backed by the Haldia MP Mr Laxman Seth who initiated the drive to identify land for a chemical hub. The other faction, led by some local panchayat leaders, formed the Bhumi Ucched Protirodh Committee to save their agricultural lands. The latter directly challenged the authority of the party leadership%u201D, a senior Left Front leader said. From the clashes that had been taking place in Nandigram and Sonachura over the past two and a half months it is clear that both factions have a sizable cache of improvised weapons. On 14 March, a large number of %u201Coutsiders%u201D, some of whom reportedly came across from Haldia, entered the village after the police broke through the first barrricade put up by women and children. On 15 March, Mr Biman Bose claimed that those in %u201Ccivilian clothes%u201D were policemen in mufti.
