History, riots and myth mystify Lalbagh skeletons

Lalbagh, Murshidabad, Feb 2: Visions of great battles and bloody riots came alive in the 'Town of 1000 doors' with some 28 skulls and 50 skeletal pieces tumbling out of a pond-site here, some 45 km from Plassey, where the British sowed the seeds of their colonial reign in India in 1757.

Murshidabad, originally named Maksudabad, was rechristened after Nawab Murshid Quli Khan, the Dewan of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa under Emperor Aurangzeb, was intimately related to events that ultimately changed the history of India. Murshidabad is also called a 'Town of 1000- doors' after Hazarduari, a palace built in Gothic style by Nawab Humanyun Jah.

At Plassey near Murshidabad was fought the historic battle between Nawab Siraj-ud-Daula and Lord Clive. The relics strewn today speak of those times.

As the country is celebrating 250 years of Battle of Plassey, fears of the grisly killings of Nithari gripped Lalbagh as exhumed skeletons emerged from a pond site alongside the Lalbag sub-correctional home within 100 yards of the jail sending the people of the sleepy hamlet into choppy fears of serial-killing.

District Superintendent of Police Rahul Srivastava told UNI , '' The skeletons came out towards the evening of Wednesday when the PWD labourers were digging up the soil to erect a boundary wall to fortify the sub-jail. As the digging continued more and more skeletons fell out. '' '' This spread panic in the area as people thronged the place and stories began to spread. However, we are in control of the situation now. Digging has been stopped. We are waiting for the forensic team to arrive, '' he said here yesterday.

Mr Srivastava gave three possiblilities related to the skeletons.

'' The bones could be of any time. It could be of the British era or of any battle as a big animal bone was found. It could also be some 30-year-old. Immediate post-mortem experts have ranged it to 100 years, but 50 or 30 could also be a possiblilty, '' he said.

Mohammed Ali, spokesperson of Murshidabad Tourism Development Association and an expert on the region, told UNI, '' There are four instances of friction in and around this area. First the battle of Plassey in 1757 that took place some 45 km from here. Immediately after the partition of India and Pakistan, Murshidabad was in Pakistan territory for three days. It was then that British-led forces had instigated largescale murders.'' '' The third incident that could have a bearing on the recent skeletal excavations were the killings at the Berhampore Central Jail during the Naxal period. The bodies being dumped here could be a possibility. The last one could be a reflection of Nashipur riots some two decades back, '' Ali said.

Mr Srivastav said, '' There are no police records of any mass killing in the past 30 years. If the skeletons are within this period we have to take up an inquiry and a very serious one at that.'' ''The presence of limestone around the skeletal remains further boosts this probability, though nothing could be said for sure,'' he said.

Meanwhile, CID Special Superintendent Nabarun Bhattacharjee, who led a three-member team here last evening, said, '' Nothing can be said for sure unless the tests were being done. We have taken the samples and checked the land records also. '' The animal skeleton that gave rise to talks of battle remains was negated by simple historical fact that Murshidabad had never seen a battle proper.

The first one in 1739 took place in Giria in Jangipur when Ali Bardi Khan defeated Nawab Sarfaraz Khan and killed him and the second at Plassey that saw Siraj-ud-Daula being defeated by Lord Clive. But both battles were fought away from Murshidabad.

In the time of Ali Bardi Khan, the Maratha marauders, called 'bargi', in this region often raided the region, but that was on the other side of the Bhaghirathi river, one of the big tributaries of the Ganges, and not on this side that is Murshidabad, Mr Ali, an expert in Murshidabad history and member of ''Murshidabad 300'', said.

In 1897 Murshidabad almost went beneath the earth in a severe earthquake but most of the people fled the place and even though almost everywhere when soil is being dug up '' we get to see the small mud burnt bricks typical of Bengal and burnt mud utencils, called 'Kholam kuchi' here, never has so many skeletons being unearthed from one place, '' Ali said.

The place being a graveyard was also out of question. Mr Ali said the muslims bury their bodies in North-South direction and the bodies found here had been scrambled. Murshidabad Municipality Chairman Mehdi Alam Mirza's comment that there was no land record that the area had any graveyard, and also upheld that it was not a graveyard that oozed out bodies.

Archeological Department branch Assitant Superintendent Gautam Haldar when contacted here at Hazarduari, which now houses a depratment of the survey, said, '' The skeletons don't seem to be so old that it needs carbon testing. It's only needed to see the origin of things that are estimated to be 1000-year-old or older. We have not been contacted yet. '' So the Murshidabad skeletons, amid the aura of Mughal era to British legions and thereafter, leave a question on their origin and natality till the forensic tests were done.

UNI