The chief minister of West Bengal, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, could not have given the people of the state a better gift at the beginning of the festive season. He announced yesterday that he was accepting the high court’s order for an investigation by the Central Bureau of Investigation into the death of Rizwanur Rahman. He added that all five police officers, whose names have come to be implicated in the case, will be transferred and punishments will follow once the investigation is over. The immediate effect of these two announcements has been a bolstering of his image as a chief minister who cares and as a chief minister who is true to his word. This refurbishing of his image was urgently needed as with every passing day that he was seen to be inactive, Mr Bhattacharjee was losing goodwill with alarming rapidity. He has finally done what everyone expected him to do many moons ago. The chief minister may have had his own good reasons for not acting, but the upshot has been the impression that he has been forced to act because of media pressure and a mounting public campaign. This impression could easily have been avoided if Mr Bhattacharjee had a better feel of the profound popular resentment the government’s apparent inactivity had caused.

The chief minister has now done exactly what The Telegraph has been advising him to do through these columns. What he must realize without any ambiguity is that while his announcements have fulfilled certain hopes, they have also given rise to certain expectations. The expectations are two-fold. One is that the truth about Rahman’s death should be discovered and the guilty punished. There is also a more long-term expectation. Mr Bhattacharjee must now take steps to clean up the police administration by destroying the nefarious links that have grown between police officers and political parties, especially the Communist Party of India (Marxist), the ruling party. The nexus between the police and sections of the business community need also to be snapped. The police force must be told in no uncertain terms that its duty is to uphold the law: lending its services to this or that section of society or to a particular party is to abuse the power that has been given to it, and is, in fact, tantamount to dereliction of duty. The best tribute that Mr Bhattacharjee can pay to Rahman is to ensure that the circumstances surrounding his death are never repeated again in the state.