FIR without naming PCPA filed by railway officer, not GRP: CPM

Charging railway minister Mamata Banerjee with "shielding" Maoists, the CPI(M) today said that a railway officer, and not the state government-controlled GRP, had lodged a complaint on the Rajdhani siege without naming the Maoists or their frontal outfit PCPA.

Among the two FIRs lodged on the October 27 incident, one was filed by the CRPF which specifically charged the Maoist-backed People's Committee against Police Atrocities with holding up of the Delhi-bound train in West Midnapore district.

The other FIR was filed by the station manager of the Jhargram railway station, Niranjan Singh, at the police station of the GRP and not by the GRP itself, senior CPI(M) leader Nilotpal Basu said here.

He said Singh lodged FIR Number 6/09 dated October 28, "which did not contain any specifics about the incident and did not even name the PCPA which had publicly claimed responsibility, not to speak of the violence perpetrated against the passengers, the drivers and the police."

"The fact that a railway officer filed a complaint at the GRP police station and did not mention the PCPA as being responsible for the siege, clearly shows the attempts of the railway ministry and the minister herself to shield and gloss over the role of Maoists in the incident," Basu said.

He said the Trinamool Congress and some central leaders were "deliberately distorting facts" to show as if the state government-controlled GRP had not mentioned the PCPA in the FIR, the CPI(M) leader charged.