Nanoor, July 1: Rabindranath Mukherjee, the Birbhum superintendent of police who was transferred today over the murder of CPM leader Ananda Das, was a “victim of circumstances”, colleagues and police sources said.

The sources said Mukherjee, a first-time SP, was “not directly responsible for the cop inaction” that Das’s family alleged was responsible for the leader’s death.

Das was dragged out of his Nanoor home on Tuesday by alleged Trinamul Congress supporters and shot dead.

Caught unawares by the chief minister’s announcement that he would be transferred, Mukherjee, who is in his late forties, said he was yet to know “the reason behind my sudden removal”. “I joined the office here only 11 months ago. I don’t know why I am being removed in such a short span,” he said over the phone.

Mukherjee had said yesterday that he was informed by local Left leaders about the attack on Das and the CPM’s zonal committee office. He said he had “immediately” sent reinforcements from neighbouring police stations. “But by the time they reached, it was too late,” Mukherjee had said.

The police sources said it was the responsibility of the local cops to control the mob. However, the eight cops who had reached Nanoor at the time of the attack were outnumbered by the 250-strong mob.

However, Das’s wife Hasi had alleged yesterday that the police did not arrive even after the leader had made frantic calls to them when he saw the mob vandalising the neighbouring party office.

The police sources said the Nanoor cops reacted late because they “had failed to realise that the mob would turn so violent”. “The local police apparently thought the mob would ransack the party office and then disperse. But they had no clue that the mob would target Das,” a police officer said.

Mukherjee, a promotee IPS, will now take over as the superintendent of railway police in Howrah.

Officers in Birbhum and Burdwan, where he had been deputy superintendent (headquarters), said Mukherjee was soft-spoken and polite. He writes poems and has acted in several plays at police events, his acquaintances in the police department said. “He is a perfect bhadralok,” a police officer said.

The police sources said the Nanoor episode was the first time that Mukherjee had been sucked into a controversy.