More Than What Meets The Eye: The Bengal Link Of Parliament Breach Prime Accused Lalit Jha

The prime accused in Wednesday’s (13 December) ‘Parliament breach’ incident, Lalit Jha, has a Bengal connection: he stayed in Kolkata for more than four years. 

Jha was a tenant in a single-room tenement on the ground floor of an old, ramshackle four-storied building on Rabindra Sarani in central Kolkata. He disappeared from the city about 18 months ago. 

During his stay in Kolkata, Jha was associated with the People's Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), a human rights body that many believe has covert links with Maoists. 

Jha’s activities in Kolkata provide enough grounds for deep suspicion about his own links with Maoists. 

He was popularly known as masterji by other tenants in the building he used to stay in, as well as local residents of the area, which is also known by its earlier name Chitpur. 

Locals knew Jha as a private tutor, though no one can say which subjects he taught. Residents of the building — its address is 218 Rabindra Sarani — told Swarajya that they used to see young men and women going to Jha’s room quite frequently. 

“We always assumed that they were his students. We knew him (Jha) as a private tutor, so we assumed that his visitors were his students,” said trader Rajeev Agarwal who lives with his family in the same building. 

But no one knew which subjects Jha taught.

“He was well-behaved at all times and very soft-spoken. He looked like he came from a good family. But he never spoke much and we also never asked him about his students and the subjects he taught. It never occurred to us that he could be involved in unlawful activities,” Bina Devi, a tenant on the third floor of the building, told Swarajya. 

A Kolkata Police team went to the address Thursday (14 December) forenoon and spoke to locals and residents of the building where Jha used to stay. 

“The young men and women who used to frequent his room looked like college students. But I now recall that they all looked quite dishevelled and nearly all of them used to wear crumpled kurtas or salwar-kameez and used to carry jholas (cloth bags). They also never spoke to anyone here and avoided eye contact with us,” Beni Prasad Gupta, a trader who runs a shop selling imitation jewellery across the street, told Swarajya.

Were these ‘visitors’, who locals assumed were Jha’s students, Maoists? The answer, in all probability, is in the affirmative. The ‘dishevelled looks’ and ‘jholas’ are a dead giveaway of being leftists belonging to the far-left. 

The Kolkata Police is intrigued by this possibility and are carrying out a probe. “We are compiling a list of Jha’s associates in the city (Kolkata) and will speak to all of them. We suspect that he (Jha) created a false impression that he was a private tutor. That would have given him the cover to meet young men and women in his room. We’re trying to find out the purpose of those meetings and if they were meant to indoctrinate the youngsters or plan something sinister,” a senior Kolkata Police officer said. 

Jha chose his address in Kolkata carefully. Rabindra Sarani is a busy area with a mix of commercial establishments and tenements. The area provides a perfect cover for clandestine activities. 

Jha’s association with the PUCL raises many red flags. The police are wary of interrogating PUCL functionaries in Kolkata right now because such a move would evoke loud protests from the self-styled human rights advocates and the entire ‘left-liberal’ ecosystem.

“We are gathering evidence and will question PUCL functionaries only once we have enough grounds to do so,” the Kolkata Police officer told Swarajya. 

The police are also proceeding with caution because senior PUCL functionaries in Bengal have close links with some top Trinamool Congress leaders. 

Jha’s Young Associate

The police are also probing Nilaksha Aich, an associate of Jha. Aich is a second year student of the government-run Bidhannagar College. 

Aich runs two NGOs — Sammobadi Subhas Sabha and Azad Hind Association. The first is ostensibly involved in education of tribals in Purulia and Jhargram districts. The Azad Hind Association reportedly organised a few meetings to propagate Maoism under the garb of spreading awareness about civil liberties. 

Aich hails from a middle-class family from Halishahar in North 24 Parganas. He was questioned at his modest house at Halishahar, which is more than 50 kilometres north of his college, Thursday (14 December). 

Jha sent a video of the protests by two of his associates outside the Parliament to Aich Wednesday (December 13). It was after Jha, the mastermind of the ‘Parliament breach’ against whom a manhunt was launched, turned himself in at Kartavya Path in New Delhi Thursday that the police discovered his association with Aich. 

The Delhi Police, on examination of Jha’s cellphone, found that he had sent the video of the protests staged outside Parliament to Aich. On questioning, Jha revealed Aich’s location. The Delhi Police alerted their Bengal counterparts immediately. 

Aich told the police officers who reached his house that he didn’t know Jha very well. He revealed that he first met Jha at a PUCL function in Kolkata earlier this year. 

According to Aich, Jha showed interest in the NGOs run by the former and expressed his desire to work for Sammobadi Subhas Sabha. Aich made Jha the secretary of the NGO. 

In that capacity, Jha visited Purulia and Jhargram a few times. Those districts, which form part of Jangalmahal that is contiguous to Jharkhand, was once infested by Maoists. 

The Maoists used to rule the roost in Jangalmahal in the second half of the first decade of this century till the early part of the second decade. The Maoists used to kill, plunder and hold the entire area to ransom during those years, and even the police and security forces used to tread with caution due to frequent attacks on them. 

The Moaists in Jangalmahal were dealt a severe blow with the killing of Mallojula Koteswara Rao (popularly known as ‘Kishenji’), a leading figure of the CPI(Maoist) in a place near the Bengal-Jharkhand border. 

But latest intelligence reports suggest that Maoists and their sympathisers are once again active in Jangalmahal.

Aich, some suggest, could be a key figure in the Maoists’ design to re-establish their base in Jangalmahal. Though he has claimed that he has revealed all that he knows about Jha to the police, many questions remain. 

The primary among them is how a second year undergraduate student can run two NGOs, especially one that functions in a faraway part of the state ostensibly educating tribals there. 

And what is the source of funds for the two NGOs? How did Aich, a college student hailing from a middle-class family, manage to raise funds to run the two NGOs? 

Police feel that Aich is not telling the whole truth about his association with Jha. “He claims he met Jha only earlier this year and does not know him well. Then why did he make Jha the secretary of his NGO? And why did Jha send the video (of the protest) to him only?,” wondered a senior police officer. 

Only custodial interrogation of Aich can reveal the answers to these pertinent questions. 

It is apparent that there is much more than what meets the eye. Jha’s activities in Kolkata, and Aich’s association with Jha as well as the functioning of his two NGOs, require thorough investigation.

Many clues point to the duo’s possible Maoist links.