Sainbari murder
The Sainbari Murder occurred on March 17, 1970, in the house of the Sain family in Bardhaman, West Bengal, India, where three young men were killed in their own house. Later, it was mentioned as one of the most notorious murder incidents in India.
Incident
The newspaper incident report puts the date of the incident at 17 March 1970. The Sain brothers were members of a family with strong allegiance towards the Indian [National Congress (R)]. In the backdrop of the turbulent political condition of the state since the 1969 [West Bengal Legislative Assembly election|1969 Legislative Assembly election], exacerbated by the collapse of the Second United Front government was the largest member but the chief ministerial position was given to Ajoy Mukherjee of Bangla Congress due to Mukherjee's fallout with his deputy chief minister, CPI, the entire incident was allegedly committed by local cadres of the CPI because of the family's support towards Congress and as punishment for the victims' refusal to switch allegiance to the CPI, although Jyoti Basu denied such allegations.Naba Kumar Sain — the eldest son of the family — was allegedly blinded and his eyes gouged out while his younger brothers, Malay and Pranab, were allegedly hacked to death in front of the watching family members by the perpetrators. Naba Kumar was killed a year later.
A private tutor, Jitendranath Rai, who had come to teach the kids in the family was hacked to death as well. Later, the elderly mother of the Sain brothers was forced to eat rice smeared with the blood of her sons by the assailants.
At the age of 75, one of the daughters-in-law of the family, Rekha Rani, recounted the horrors of the incident in an interview with The Indian Express. She said:
Swarnalata Josh, the daughter of the Sain family, also witnessed the atrocities of that day. The attack took place on the day of Swarnalata's one-month-old son Amrit Kumar Josh's Shashthi ritual. The frantic attackers also wanted to throw the newborn baby into the fire. Later, with the help of the locals, the newborn was saved.
The newborn of that day, 51-year-old, Amrit Kumar Josh said in a 2011 interview with The Times of India:
Aftermath
The atrocity of the incident was so shocking that it eclipsed other acts of monstrosity that occurred on 17 March 1970. Indira Gandhi, Congress leader & Prime Minister of India, had visited the house in the heart of Bardhaman town to console the bereaved.The shock made the mother lose her mental balance and state from which she never recovered until her death a decade later. Those communist cadres who perpetrated this violence may have gone on to become ministers and MPs under the CPI led Left Front government and were never brought to book, as heavyweight CPI leaders like Benoy Konar, Anil Basu, Nirupam Sen and Amal Halder were alleged by the defense to be directly involved in the Sainbari murder case.
When the Left Front was ousted from power in 2011 West [Bengal Legislative Assembly election|2011] and the newly elected Trinamool government formed a commission to probe the incident, Buddhadeb Bhattacharya said "It's politics of vendetta."