Cops injured by the mob

Calcutta, Feb. 5: The bullet wounds of Dinhata suggest that police fired indiscriminately, flouting guidelines for controlling and dispersing mobs, senior officers in Calcutta said.

The five Forward Bloc supporters who were killed and eight who sustained bullet injuries were hit above waist — in the head, neck, chest, hands or the back.

Guidelines clearly say the purpose of firing is to disperse a mob and not to kill, a senior officer said. “If people were hit in the back, it means they were fleeing. If the police fired on people who were fleeing, it was illegal.”

Quoting from the manual, an officer said the police could open fire only after a baton charge had failed and options like lobbing like tear gas shells and firing rubber bullets were exhausted.

According to the rule book, it has to be a “controlled firing” to disperse a mob.

“The police should first declare an assembly unlawful on the public address system and give enough time to the people to disperse. If they don’t disperse, the police have to resort to the lathi charge and other non-lethal options,” the officer said.

One of the five killed was shot in the head and another on the nape of the neck. Two among those injured were hit in the back.

“It is very obvious that they were running for cover. All of them were also hit above the waist,” the officer said.

The guidelines say a person has to be first shot in the leg if the situation turns vio-lent. “In that case, the possibility of death is minimal. Something must have gone wrong for the police to have opened fired in that way. It seemed pretty indiscriminate,” said a senior IPS officer.

He said the police should have shown more restraint. “Instead of firing live ammunition, they should have used smoke grenades that would have sounded like explosives but not taken lives.”