Far away from Gujarat, in Dum Dum, on the northern suburbs of Calcutta, people are living in constant fear of a handful of goons. The colour of these goons' badge of courage is not saffron, but red. They are the stormtroopers not of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party or the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, but of the ruling Marxists of Bengal. Although any comparison with Gujarat is preposterous, there is good reason to raise an alarm over the Dum Dum outrage, which the political opponents of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) have failed to do. It is for the police and the courts to prove if Dulal Banerjee, the CPI(M) strongman of Dum Dum who has been arrested for masterminding the murder of two former party activists, also with criminal antecedents, was actually responsible for the crime. Even if he is proved guilty, one could say there is nothing new about party-backed criminals holding common people to ransom. Worthies like him are everywhere adding firepower to politicians' race for power. What is new, however, is the way the CPI(M) leadership has reacted to the events leading to Banerjee's arrest. One has to be exceptionally gullible to be taken in by the party leadership's playacting. We are told the party is planning disciplinary action against Banerjee and his gang members, that it has censured the veteran leader of the Calcutta district committee, Rajdeo Goala, for publicly supporting Banerjee even after his arrest and that a two-member party inquiry committee has been set up to find out how the musclemen struck such deep roots in the Dum Dum unit. The party leadership must be extraordinarily cynical to believe that the show of disciplinary action can wash off its guilt in the public eye. Anil Biswas and his colleagues among the party top brass know that the party unit in the North 24 Paraganas, to which Dum Dum belongs, has long been festering with factional rivalries, muscle and money power and many other ailments. It was the first district unit of the CPI(M) that witnessed revolts and desertions way back in 1978. The murky affairs of the unit came to light once again in two recent incidents - the arrest of some criminals wanted by the police at the Salt Lake stadium complex, where they were allegedly sheltered by the state transport minister, Subhas Chakraborty, who is an influential faction leader of the district, and the murder of Sailen Das, a respected party leader who was also the chairman of the Dum Dum municipality. It is difficult to believe, therefore, that Biswas - or even the chief minister, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee - knew nothing about the criminal activities of partymen like Banerjee before the murders in which he has been implicated. One wonders what stopped the leadership from taking action against the erring members before the murders. And this is not the first time that one has heard complaints about Banerjee and his group being involved in extortion rackets, illegal property deals and such other activities. Obviously, party leaders looked the other way because they did not want more trouble in a troublesome unit. Or, they were powerless to stem the rot. If they are now putting up even a pretence of acting tough, it must be because the murders have brought the inner-party squabbles out in the open. The problem is that these murderous wranglings are not just matters of party discipline. Criminals may serve party interests but they also work against public interest and threaten public peace. The people in Dum Dum or elsewhere in the North 24 Paraganas are not really bothered about which faction controls the party's district leadership. But they cannot live in peace if the battle for party supremacy gives them a sense of insecurity. The chief minister and his party colleagues must therefore understand that bringing a party-backed criminal to book cannot be merely a matter of party discipline; the objective should be to assure the people that their interests, and not the party's, are of utmost importance. It is not enough that the party did not stand in the way of Banerjee's arrest this time; it must take the blame that it wants the inquiry committee to fix on its Dum Dum members. The evidence of the party's past actions in similar cases does not inspire much confidence about its honesty of purpose. Subhas Chakraborty did not even get a reprimand from the leadership over the Salt Lake stadium episode. Although the police arrested the prime accused in the Sailen Das murder case, the party's promised purge of criminal elements in the area did not come about. In a more glaring example of cynical disregard of public opinion, Lakshmi Dey, who was suspended from the party for his association with the main accused in the Bowbazar blast of 1993, was rehabilitated not only as a member of the state assembly, but to his former position as chief whip of the Left Front legislature party. Few know and understand this record of so-called disciplinary actions better than the hardened, party-propped criminals. No wonder the associates of Dum Dum's Banerjee are openly threatening rivals with retaliatory strikes once the media noise over the incident dies down and they can get back to business as usual. Actually, the CPI(M) leadership too would hope that, despite the inquiry committee and little party shake-ups, the Dum Dum shame would fade from public memory like so many others before it. The Dum Dum saga is disturbing for yet another reason. The police are said to have arrested Banerjee after the chief minister gave them the go-ahead. But why should the police need the green signal from the state's chief executive if they have enough evidence about somebody's involvement in a crime? The answer obviously points to the party's shadow over the police. And, even the chief minister's writ does not always run at lower levels, where the police station and the party's local committee operate in tandem for each other's benefit. Although Bhattacharjee keeps promising to change things, Dum Dum shows he has an uphill task ahead. There is something sinister about taking the high moral ground in public - on Gujarat or some other national issue - and being little tyrants in your own backyard. If the police in Ahmedabad are to be blamed for acting like VHP members, the police in Dum Dum cannot be hailed as angels for singing the Marxist tunes. The CPI(M) members subverting the law and committing crimes cannot be any better than others who do the same in the name of some other ideology. The crimes in Dum Dum - and the partymen's involvement in them - cannot be any less condemnable just because they are not communal or because they are nothing compared to the scale of the Gujarat mayhem.