CRPF to question villagers

The CRPF team will ask the villagers how the bodies disappeared and whether the land was used as a graveyard earlier, say CRPF sources.

CRPF will question local people on the identity of bodies missing from five graves near Nandigram. Assistant Commandant Arindam Mukhopadhyay, chief of CRPF's Gokul Nagar camp, visited the graves at Sherkhanchowk in the CPI(M) stronghold of Khejuri on Friday and has posted a team of CRPF personnel there to question local people on the identity of missing bodies. The CRPF has set up four camps in Nandigram.

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The CRPF team will ask the villagers how the bodies disappeared and whether the land was used as a graveyard earlier, CRPF sources said.

Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee had claimed on Thursday that the police carried five bodies from Khejuri to Kolkata for post-mortem the previous night.

Three new graves had also been found at Mansinghber, in Khejuri, on Thursday. These graves could be of women as torn pieces
of saree and bits of bangles and a necklace were found.

A PTI correspondent, who went to the Sherkhanchowk on Thursday, had seen burnt wood and portions of bicycle tyres lying around the shallow graves.

Villagers alleged that five bodies of CPI(M) workers killed while making bombs there on October 28 were burnt at the spot and buried for a night before being taken away.