Chennai, May 8: Nine young men said to be from Murshidabad have been caught allegedly robbing a jewellery showroom in Tamil Nadu ' their hunt for the pot of gold 2,000km from home retelling the tragedy of Bengal and reminding Mamata Banerjee of the pressing need for jobs.
One instance of a botched-up theft cannot be held up as a barometer of the decline of a state as populated and diverse as Bengal. But the circumstances leading up to the alleged crime and a somewhat similar incident in March suggest southern India has emerged as the poor man's El Dorado for desperate youths hailing from Bengal who see little opportunity or avenue for employment back home.
An undeniable ' and heart-wrenching ' testimony is the departure of thousands of youths in what can only be called labour wagons from the outskirts of Calcutta to southern India every weekend ' a stunning reversal from the 1950s and 1960s when educated south Indians used to flock to the eastern city in search of white-collar jobs.
The thwarted robbery in Dharmapuri, nearly 2,000km from Murshidabad from where the suspects are said to have started out, also underscored how unfamiliar the youths were to modern-day security devices common in southern Indian shops. Police said the nine youths ' all in their 20s ' used tried and tested tactics of jumping from terrace to terrace and slicing through a window grille with a gas cutter to enter the five-storeyed showroom on Sunday night.
However, they were unaware that sensors installed in the shop were sending text-message alerts to the owner while a window grille was being broken open.
Additional deputy superintendent Saravanan said the owner had installed sensors on all the doors and windows on police advice after a spate of jewellery thefts in the state. "The shop had more than Rs 5 crore worth of gold and diamonds," he said.
When the owner received the SMS alert around midnight, he called police and rushed to the shop with his managers and other staff.
The police said the group had come over from Murshidabad only to rob stores and had confessed to cleaning out a cellphone shop of Rs 25 lakh worth of handsets in Dharmapuri a few days ago. The alleged thieves had rented rooms to carry out a recce, the police said.
Officers identified the nine youths as Ayush, Mohammed Yusuf, Shankar Mondal, Mithun Mondal, Akthar, Shafiq, Sheikh Fakruddin, Mohammed Feroz and Mohammed Rafiq.
"Since they claimed they were from Bengal's Murshidabad district and their modus operandi matched a similar heist in Tiruppur in February, we are probing a possible link," Saravanan said.
A Tamil Nadu police team had arrested three persons from Farakka, Murshidabad, in March in connection with the Tiruppur robbery, in which a gang stole jewellery worth Rs 14 crore after cutting through the terrace grille. The police suspect that a single mastermind could be behind the two gangs and are trying to track him from the call details of the nine.
It has not yet been established beyond doubt if the nine are indeed from Murshidabad, although some officers said voter cards with addresses in the Bengal district had been found in the rooms. In Kerala, some cases have been reported where infiltrators from Bangladesh claimed they hailed from Bengal.
Kerala, a state that sends many youths to the Gulf to toil but draws innumerable construction workers from other states to plug the sweat deficit, has around 10 lakh labourers from the east, mostly from Bengal.
Several migrant labourers are often accused of local crimes. As the labourers enjoy little political protection away from home, some feel the police sometimes slap unsolved crimes on them to clear the backlog. If alleged gangs like the one suspected to be from Murshidabad seek a hunting ground in the south, the migrant labourers may have to bear the brunt of any backlash.
What is undeniable is that nearly one lakh people from Murshidabad are working as masons and labourers in the southern Indian states.
"The reason is purely economical. A mason in Murshidabad will get Rs 150 per day but he may not get work every day. In Calcutta, he might earn Rs 200. But in Tamil Nadu, the same mason earns Rs 300 per day while the rate is about Rs 400 in Kerala," said Majid Khan, 40, a resident of Naoda, who has worked in Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Karnataka as a mason for 15 years. Majid's son Musafir Khan is now working as a mason in Chennai.
Khalil Sheikh, 22, is a labourer in Bangalore, along with several other villagers of Gangadhari in Naoda. "I will not get more than Rs 100 in Murshidabad. In Calcutta I might get Rs 150. But in places like Bangalore, I am earning Rs 250 to Rs 300 per day," Khalil said this evening.
The chief of the panchayat samity of Naoda, Abdul Bari Mollah, said something that should make chief minister Mamata sit up.
"The district (Murshidabad) doesn't have any industry except bidi factories. As there is no industry, there are no jobs. Also, there is no university and the number of school dropouts is high. So, there is a tendency to go for menial jobs in other states," said Mollah.
34 years of CPM rule have destroyed all industries in Bengal with the result that the people of this state can find no work in their own state.
They have to go either to the south or west to Gujarat or North to Delhi.
I have found Bengali maid-servant as far-way as Ahmedabad and Jamnagar in Gujarat.
Surat is swarming with Benaglis working as labourers in the diamond and Sari trades.
What a fall from the days 40 years ago when people from all over India would come to Bengal to seek for work.
In my college days in 1965-66, I used to pity the boys coming from UP, Haryana and Rajasthan as to where they would get work for there were no industries then in those states. Now Bengal has to be pitied,all because of the CPM and Jyoti Basu.
Of course, things have not improved under Mamta Banerjee, probably worse.
We had a trailer of her industrial policy when she threw out the Nana and Tatas, even before becoming CM.
she has become even more arrogant after becoming CM.Bengal has many more years of sorrow in its horroscope
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