Teachers and non-teaching staff went to the office of the district inspector (DI) of schools in Kasba on April 9 but the crowd turned violent after reaching there and there were also outsiders among the protesters, Manoj Verma, Kolkata Police Commissioner, said on Friday.
Verma said that although the group went to put a padlock on the office, they broke multiple cordons and tried to break the office padlock resulting in violence, which was not expected in a teachers’ programme, prompting police to use “mild force”.
The police also said they had identified some outsiders who had fuelled the violence but did not reveal their identities because a probe was on.
“It was a teachers’ programme. What will you expect? No one expects that teachers will indulge in violence. The arrangement was made accordingly. We had information that they would go and put a padlock at the office. But there is a huge difference between putting a padlock and breaking one,” Verma said.
He mentioned the presence of “outsiders”.
A teacher who was part of the delegation that met education minister Bratya Basu on Friday contradicted the claims of the top cop. “There were no outsiders. Only we were there,” he said.
Joint commissioner (crime) of Kolkata Police, Rupesh Kumar, shared on Friday a detailed account of how the protesters breached the cordon of guardrails outside the DI office on Wednesday, scaled the locked gate, used concrete chunks to break open the padlock on the gate and how they teamed up trying to break the lock on the collapsible gate of the office.
He said there was provocation to break the padlock.
Video footage of protesters breaching the cordon and scaling the gate of the DI office compound was screened at Lalbazar, the city police headquarters.
“Thirteen police personnel were injured. As you can see, many of the protesters tried to jump over the boundary wall and their legs were on the hands of our lady officers. But our officers showed utmost restraint,” Kumar said.
Kumar said sergeant Tanmay Mandal posted there suffered multiple injuries and has a plaster on his leg. He has been admitted to a hospital. “Sub-inspector Ritan Das has also suffered injuries in his chest and groin,” he said.
Verma, when asked if there was an assessment failure in not deploying enough police personnel at the DI office on Wednesday, said no one expected violence at a “teachers’ programme”.
“Words like demonic, brutal... are being used against the police. But so far no one has said anything against the people who caused injury to the police. Who would have taken responsibility if the officers had suffered any serious and permanent injuries?” Verma asked, adding that the officers exercised restraint.
The top cop said taking lessons from the RG Kar crime, several steps had been taken to sensitise the police force on how to handle such situations, how to handle elderly people and women.
“It is not that we have started (making changes) after rthis incident. We saw a lot of things during the RG Kar incident. After that, many things have been done. We hold meetings with the police station officers once a month,” Verma said.
Last year, the rape and murder of a 31-year-old postdoctorate trainee at RG Kar Medical College and Hospital and the way the case was handled had triggered a string of allegations against Kolkata Police. Based on a court order, the investigation of the case was handed over to the CBI three days after the city police started the probe.
Allegations of “insensitive behaviour” and “mishandling” of the case had been raised by the parents of the slain doctor.