“The area is not under our jurisdiction,” a police officer, stationed just 40 feet from where piles of arms lay in the fields, told The Indian Express. IG (Western Range) Arun Gupta put it differently: “The area is sensitive and any act of high-handedness will lead to more tension. So we are exercising restraint.”

In the villages of the region, The Indian Express team found improvised weapons by the roadside, among them crude single-shot firearms. It seems both sides — the CPM cadres and those with the Bhumi Uchched Pratirodh Committee — had been prepared for clashes.

And the site where people died in firing still has tell-tale signs: there’s bloodstain on the street as well as used teargas shells, torn clothes, clumps of hair and scalp. Union Minister Priya Ranjan Dasmunsi, who visited the area, went to the extent of blaming the police for siding with the CPM cadres. “I have authentic information that the police had been supplying arms to the cadres,” he alleged.

Meanwhile, ten persons, allegedly affiliated to the CPM and arrested yesterday from Jananipara brick kiln in Nandigram, were remanded in police custody until March 22.In villages like Khejuri, the tension is palpable. The CPM cadres have put up black flags. And in Nandigram, where those opposed to an SEZ are in greater numbers, groups of men and women crowd every street corner.

“We have regained control over our grounds and are prepared to counter any misadventure by police or CPM cadres,” said Abdus Samad, local leader of Jamiat-e-Ulema Hind which is part of the Bhumi Ucched Pratirodh Committee. The committee has again started setting up roadblocks, even as the CBI team scours the villages searching for evidence of what happened here last Wednesday.