Tweet On Old Skeleton Raises A Stink In Tripura

A tweet by Sunil Deodhar, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) prabhari in Tripura, this afternoon has raised a stink and prised open a 13-year-old controversy involving former Tripura chief minister Manik Sarkar.

Deodhar, credited with scripting the BJP’s stupendous victory in the remote northeastern state, advised the new Chief Minister, Biplab Deb, to get the septic tanks in all ministerial bungalows in Agartala cleaned before the new ministers move into their official bungalows. He reminded Deb that “a woman’s skeleton was found in septic tank of ex-CM Manik Sarkar’s quarters on January 4, 2005, but the case was deliberately suppressed”. Deodhar was alluding to the shocking discovery of the skeletal remains of a woman in the septic tank in the chief minister’s official residence. The discovery created a furore and though Sarkar tried to distance himself and his party from allegations of foul play, the stain never did wash away.

Sarkar requested the Central Bureau of Investigation to take up the probe, but the central agency declined. The Central Forensic Science Laboratory at Chandigarh, which carried out tests on the skeletal remains, said they were of a woman who died about 20 years ago (around 1985). That caused more embarrassment to the Marxists since the bungalow was occupied by Communist Party of India (Marxist)’s Nripen Chakraborty during his tenure as chief minister from January 1978 to February 1988.

Later that year (2005), senior Tripura Congress leader Samir Ranjan Barman created a sensation by disclosing the identity of the girl whose remains were found in the septic tank. He had then alleged that the girl was raped and murdered by CPI(M) leaders and her parents driven out of Tripura to hush up the case. The CPI(M) government never instituted a proper probe into those allegations, though Burman repeatedly said he had evidence to back his claims. It is widely believed the case was hushed up to protect some senior CPI(M) functionaries.

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