Nandigram violence

The Nandigram violence was an incident in Nandigram in the West Bengal state of India, where, on the orders of the Left Front government, more than 4,000 heavily armed police stormed the Nandigram area with the aim of stamping out protests against the West Bengal government’s plans to expropriate of land for a Special Economic Zone (SEZ) to be developed by the Indonesian-based Salim Group. The police shot dead at least 14 villagers and wounded 70 more.

The SEZ controversy started when the government of West Bengal decided that the Salim Group of IndonesiaFor more information on the Salim Group please see Sudono Salim would set up a chemical hub under the SEZ policy at Nandigram, a rural area in the district of Purba Medinipur. The villagers took over the administration of the area and all the roads to the villages were cut off. A front-page story in the Kolkata newspaper, The Telegraph, on 4 January 2007 was headlined, "False alarm sparks clash". According to the newspaper that village council meeting at which the alleged land seizure was to be announced was actually a meeting to declare Nandigram a "clean village", that is, a village in which all the households had access to toilet facilities. However, later events indicate that the government had in fact decided to set up the chemical hub and the villagers' concerns were genuine. But following the villagers' objection to and protest...
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