TALE OF TWO FIRs

On July 1, two days after Tapas Paul’s rape-and-shoot speech surfaced, chief minister Mamata Banerjee had fired a rhetorical question at reporters: “Okey nishshartha khama chaite bola hoyechhe. Ami ki okey khoon korbo (he has been asked to tender an unconditional apology. What should I do, kill him)?”

On Thursday, Calcutta High Court gave an unequivocal answer to that question: the deputy inspector-general of the CID should lodge an FIR against Paul, a Trinamul MP, within 72 hours.

The chief minister, who also handles the home portfolio, had 2,040 hours or 85 days to do so on her own.

Yet, the government headed by her fought its way through multiple courtrooms — using taxpayers’ money and in vain as it turned out — to avoid filing an FIR. The same fate had befallen the government 24 hours earlier when another judge of the high court handed over to the CBI a murder case after bluntly saying that the state police probe was tainted by interference by the political executive.

On Thursday, the reluctance of the police to act in cases associated with Trinamul acolytes and the zeal with which FIRs are lodged against critics were subjects of animated discussions among officers who are having to face the music in courts.

Given the current public mood on the streets of Calcutta, some officers were blunt, though they declined to go on record because they are not authorised to speak to the media.

“The chief minister micro-manages the police.… She sends direct instructions to those in charge of some thanas, which has broken the chain of command. At times, the actions of the police are not based on law but based on discretion,” said a senior police officer.

The officer went to the extent of saying that the state home secretary’s post has become redundant because of the chief minister’s direct interactions with officers who implement orders on the ground.

An IAS officer familiar with the goings-on echoed the police officer. “There have been occasions when SPs and even some of the OCs have alerted the CM to major developments through text messages without informing their seniors or even the home secretary,” said the IAS officer.

According to him, the court’s indictment of the DGP in the Sagar Ghosh murder case yesterday cannot be seen in isolation.

“The DGP would not be acting on his own in such a sensitive case. He has followed the instructions from the CM. Otherwise, no officer would dare to act against the order of the high court,” said the IAS officer. He was referring to the court’s statement that its faith in the DGP had been shattered by the conclusion that he flouted an earlier directive not to consult the government in the murder case.

The buck stops with the chief minister and she has the right to keep an eye on key departments. But officers say that the impact had been felt most in the police department where the chief minister has created a pool of loyal officers.

The lines are so clearly etched in the perception of bureaucrats that officials openly identify those who regularly consult the chief minister before taking any significant action. Senior IPS officers like West Midnapore police superintendent Bharati Ghosh, Bidhannagar police commissionerate’s commissioner Rajeev Kumar, Murshidabad SP Humayun Kabir are counted among those who are in touch with the chief minister.

Mid-level officers like OC, Kalighat, Mahadeb Chakrabarty and OC, Hare Street, Shantanu Sinha Biswas are also said to be in touch with the chief minister through text messages. Sinha Biswas was the officer who had slapped a pest-controller with the charge of waging war against the state after kerosene was found spilt on the floor of a room in Writers’ Buildings.

Politicisation of the police force in Bengal is nothing new. When the Left was in power, the CPM headquarters on Alimuddin Street used to act as an additional home department.

Former commissioner of police Tushar Talukdar had described Jyoti Basu as “manishi (a great man)” during a visit by the then chief minister to the Lalbazar police headquarters of Calcutta police.

Investigations into cases such as the Bantala gang rape and the disappearance of a Calcutta University official in the 1990s were believed to have been affected by alleged political interference then.

“There were several instances of political interference then but it has never been like this. We are not sure how to proceed on everyday events. Something as straightforward and simple as filing an FIR after a hate speech and an admission in writing that he said so (Trinamul had circulated a letter of apology from Paul) cannot be done because we don’t know how the executive leadership will react. Never did they (the Left) micromanage things like this,” said a senior official in the state home department.

He pointed out that the ideal way would have been to allow the police to proceed on their own and let the MP’s political party (Trinamul, in this case) fight it out in the courts. “Now the court has ordered us to do what we should have done on our own,” he added.

“Remember the unceremonious removal of R.K. Pachnanda (the former commissioner of Calcutta police) after a police officer was shot dead in Garden Reach by a group of Trinamul men. The probe was taken away from the detective department simply because it registered a watertight FIR accusing a Trinamul borough chairman. The CID was assigned to conduct the probe. It has never happened before in the history of Calcutta police. But look what happened to Pachnanda (who has since left Bengal),” said a senior police officer.

In the Paul speech case, the textbook response would have been to act like Pachnanda did. But Arnab Ghosh, who was posted as Nadia SP two days after the Paul tape surfaced and after a stint with Bidhannagar police that probed the Saradha scandal without netting any big fish, said he was examining the complaint — an exercise that took so many days that the issue reached the high court.

Citing another example, an officer said K. Jayaraman was transferred out as Siliguri commissioner and put on compulsory waiting after he arrested Malda district magistrate Godala Kiran Kumar for alleged involvement in a financial scam.

The IPS officer explained the toll on the morale of the force. “Jayaraman followed the rule book. But his transfer was so demoralising that several officers wondered aloud if it had anything to do with the fact that the chief minister had shared the stage with Godala a few days before his arrest. It is unfortunate,” he said.

The mood now borders on paranoia. “Are you mad? Do you expect me to discuss this over the phone? Even our phones are under the scanner. Come here, I will answer all your questions in a face-to-face discussion,” said a senior police officer in Birbhum when he was asked by The Telegraph why the police took 14 hours to register a case against a Trinamul leader who entered Bolpur police station and assaulted an officer.

Asked whether officers couldn’t politely but firmly decline to carry out unlawful orders, an officer said: “If I am transferred for following the rule book, I will not mind. A police officer can perform everywhere. But if I am put on compulsory waiting, it will hurt me. I will be doing nothing but I will be accepting my salary. In that case, it’s better to release a goon if my bosses order me to do so.”