law and order turmoil

On May 5, the third Trinamool Congress government in West Bengal will complete one year in power. It will also mark Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s 11-year tenure in the state. But, at a time when the Trinamool Congress should have celebrated, the state government is grappling with a series of incidents that have raised serious questions about the law and order situation in the state. The violence that broke out in Birbhum’s Bogatui village on March 21, when nine people, including seven women and a child, were burnt to death in retaliatory violence following the killing of a local Trinamool Congress leader, is troubling the West Bengal government and has been in the news for a long time. State’s ruling party.

After the Bogtui violence and the murder of a Congress councilor in Jhalda, Purulia, there was a spate of cases of sexual assault on women, especially minors. These incidents have come as an embarrassment to the state government.

In half a dozen cases, including the violence in Bogatui, the murder in Jhalda, the rape and death of a 14-year-old girl in Nadia’s Hanskhali, the Calcutta High Court directed the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to probe. Case. In its order directing the CBI to conduct the investigation, the court has shown little faith in the state police and confirmed that investigation by the central agency is necessary to restore confidence in the people.

While the track record of the CBI investigation, including its long-running probe into various chit fund scams, may be questioned, one thing is clear – the West Bengal government needs to sort out the current law and order situation. The general perception of the ruling party in the state is that these “isolated” or “trivial” incidents are not true, especially when the High Court had to intervene and hand over investigations in several cases to the CBI within a span of a few weeks. , Moreover, the Trinamool Congress’s habit of pointing to similar or more violent incidents in Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled states such as Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh may mean little to the people of the state, who saw the BJP overwhelmingly vote in the 2021 assembly elections. was rejected from After 11 years of continuous rule, the Trinamool Congress should have been able to present West Bengal as a model state as an alternative to BJP-ruled states, but the party leadership continued to blame the deteriorating law. starts accusing. order Status.

In all the incidents where the Calcutta High Court had to intervene, the role of the police has been questioned. The police have been accused of not taking action in Bogtui and Hanskhali. Cases like the death of student leader Anish Khan and the murder of a Congress councilor in Jhalda have also come to the fore, where the police themselves allege their involvement in the crime.

On April 27, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee publicly pulled up senior police officers and asked why the state should suffer because of their negligence. However, this is not just negligence. It is an open secret that the ruling party at the local level controls the police. This became apparent on 23 March when the chief minister himself ordered the arrest of a block president in Rampurhat, who had refused to deploy police to Bogtui village to stop the massacre. Inadvertently, Ms Banerjee indicated that local Trinamool leaders have power over the police. One of the most difficult and urgent tasks for Ms Banerjee at present is to restore the prestige of her police force, which has taken a major hit in the past year. The police in West Bengal will have to avoid local political interference and carry out their functions without any bias to check such violent crimes.

Shivsahaya.s@thehindu.co.in