A Rogue Police Force?

Better late than never, they say. But this adage will not placate Kolkatans still simmering with anger over the 26-day delay in shunting out Kolkata Police Commissioner Prasun Mukherjee, Deputy Commissioner (Headquarters) Gyanwant Singh, Deputy Commissioner (Detective Department) Ajoy Kumar, Assistant Commissioner Sukanti Chakraborti and sub-inspector Krishnendu Das for illegally interfering in the Rizwanur-Priyanka marriage and for their role in separating the couple. 

The 26 days have seen the clamour for the removal of these officers and their punishments grow louder. Kolkatans have been unrelenting in this collective demand. But to direct ire over this case solely against the police would be like missing the woods for the trees. BecauseKolkata, and West Bengal, Police are, after all, part of the state machinery that has been controlled by the LeftFront--and more specifically the CPI(M)--these past three decades. And these 30 long years have witnessed a systematic subversion and politicization of all institutions, including the police force, by the ruling communists. 

The result is that the police has become a mere adjunct of the CPI(M) party machinery, a force made up overwhelmingly of men who are Left supporters and sympathisers and who owe their jobs, and their future prospects, to the party. This being the case, most men in the police force now feel no necessity to follow norms and proper procedures or act within the framework of the law. For the simple reason that the ruling communists also have scant regard for the law of the land and the policemen are basically following their political masters in letter and spirit.

Or else, which responsible police officer would ever seek to justify what was a blatantly illegal act of his juniors in summoning a legally married, adult couple and 'counselling' the duo to part ways? Kolkata Police Commissioner Prasun Mukherjee not only justified the illegal interference by his officers in the Rizwanur-Priyanka marriage, but also sought to rationalize the intervention with the extremely outrageous statement that the opposition by the Todis (Priyanka's family) to her marriage with an educated but poor Muslim boy was "natural". 

Mukherjee's exact words were: "After taking care of their daughter for 23 years, if the family finds one morning that she has left them to start a new life with an unknown youth, parents cannot accept it. The reaction of the Todi family was natural. The family reacted because Rizwanur's social and financial status didn't match theirs". 

Now, before we erupt in indignation and anger over this statement, let us pause to ask ourselves a few questions: 

Didn't Prasun Mukherjee know he was trying to defend something that's indefensible? Didn't he know that what he was saying was illegal, wrong andun-constitutional? I'm sure the senior IPS officer that he is with so many years of experience, Mukherjee couldn't have been unaware of the law that doesn't, in any way, sanction any meddling in the marriage or affairs of adults. He would also know that the statement he made suggesting that a marriage between two persons from different social and economic backgrounds was morally and legally untenable. Then why did he make such a statement? 

Prasun Mukherjee is no fool, mind you. The only possible reason can be that Mukherjee acted in full knowledge of the fact that the police in Bengal are a law unto themselves, quite like the CPI(M), and he and his force would be able to ride roughshod over and ride out any adverse fallout of the actions of his officers and his own comments. He wasn't wrong. If the CPI(M), and Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, could have weathered the storm over the gunning down of 14 people at Nandigram a few months ago without even an apology, without paying a rupee as compensation the families of the dead or injured, and without even a constable being transferred, leave aside being suspended or dismissed, for what was seen as a totally unprovoked firing, why would anything happen to police officers for trying to break up a marriage between a rich Hindu girl and a poor Muslim boy? And why would the Police Commissioner thus have any qualms about denouncing such a marriage or speaking blatantly on behalf of a rich industrialist?

It is not only the Prasun Mukherjee who displayed scant regard for the law. The Kolkata Police Deputy Commissioner (Detective Department) Ajoy Kumar had summoned Priyanka and Rizwanur thrice to Lalbazar, the city police headquarters. Each time, he counseled Priyanka to return to her parents and ordered Rizwanur to ask his wife to leave him. He also darkly hinted at taking action against Rizwanur if hedidn't do the police's (read: the Todis') bidding. The third time, Kumar told Rizwanur he would be arrested on charges of abducting Priyanka if shedidn't return to her parents. 

"Ashok Todi had filed a complaint of abduction and wrongful confinement against Rizwanur and I told him he could be arrested on these charges if hedidn't tell Priyanka to return to her parents. She then went back to her parents," Kumar told mediapersons. Didn't Kumar, a senior IPS officer, know what he was doing was grossly illegal and unjust? Did he not know that it was Todi who was liable to be arrested for having filed a blatantly false complaint against his son-in-law instead of Rizwanur who did nothing illegal at all? Did Kumar not know that he could not even summon Rizwanur, not to speak of arresting him, without registering a case against him on the basis of the complaint filed by Todi? 

Why did Kumar not register a case based on Todi's complaint? Here again, Kumar knew perfectly well he could and would get away with anything. The law of the land could go for a toss; as long as hedid the bidding of his seniors and stayed on the right side of the ruling communists, he would not only be safe, but would also reap rich rewards in future. 

Could any police officer in any other state have acted so illegally and then had the gumption to cock a snook at the law and theconstitution so openly and unashamedly? Why, could the chief of a police force of any other state have mocked the media and society at large with: "This is how we have been dealing such cases and will continue to in future…if the police don't act in such cases, who will? The PWD?" 

Take the case of another police officer who had threatenedRizwanur--Deputy Commissioner (Headquarters) Gyanwant Singh, an officer with close ties to the CPI(M). Singh drew the ire of Election Commission observers for acting as a "CPI(M) agent" during the last Assembly elections. That time, he was the superintendent of police at Murshidabad, a district where the Congress had obliterated the CPI(M) and the other left parties. 

It's apparent from Singh's actions then that his brief was to put the Congress on the defensive and help the CPI(M) make fresh inroads. He did so with 'distinction', having resurrected old cases against Congress leaders in the district, framing false cases against them, threatening Congress supporters and sympathisers, helping the CPI(M) and even rigging the polls. So, it was only natural for him to assume that Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, and the CPI(M), would not do anything to him after all the illegal things he haddone for them. 

Gyanwant Singh is just one example. The list of police officers who had to do the CPI(M)'s bidding in total violation of the law of the land is very long and includes almost all officers. Having used them to act illegitimately on their party's behalf, how could the CPI(M) leaders, especially the Chief Minister, have taken prompt action against five of them for what the party and Bhattacharjee, it appears, consider a minor lapse? 

When Bhattacharjee ultimately did transfer them, it was not because he acted out of any conviction, but because of pressure from the party that had rightly analysed by then that inaction was costing the party dear politically. The reason for transferring them, thus, was political and not ethical, moral or legal. Unfortunately for the five officers and their political masters, public anger had got so widespread that not shunting out the officers would have led to serious trouble. Public anger in this case was unprecedented and, thus, couldn't have been factored in by the police and the party earlier. Hadn't it been for the people's movement, the five officers would have still been sitting pretty in their chairs and the party wouldn't have pressed for their removal. Because doing so would cause disgruntlement among officers. This the officers know fully well, and this is what encourages them to commit other illicit acts every day. They know fully well that, all said and done, they have committed wrongs for the party and the party will never let them down if they commit wrongs on their own. That's not how the CPI(M) functions, they know.

To get an idea of how barefacedly defiant of the law Kolkata Police officers were behaving in the Rizwanur case, consider the episode when Inspector General of Police (Enforcement Branch), Nazrul Islam, heard a police sub-inspector threatening Sadique Hossain, a witness to the Rizwanur-Priyanka marriage. Krishnendu Das, the sub-inspector of the Kolkata Police's Anti Rowdy Section that's under Ajoy Kumar, had been threatening Hossain for many days, asking him to issue a statement that Rizwanur had married Priyanka forcibly. Such a statement would, no doubt, have been used by the police to arrest Rizwanur, throw him the lockup, torture him (the standard operating procedure in police lockups in Bengal) and even kill him.

Anyway, Hossain, fed up with the threats and fearing for his life, approached Nazrul Islam, an honest, upright and bold officer, for help. While Hossain was at Islam's office, he got a call on his cellphone from sub-inspector Das. Nazrul Islam has gone on record saying that he took Hossain's phone and heard the threats and verbal use that Das was heaping. When Islam ultimately identified himself, Das apoplogised but said he was "acting on orders from the top". Das, and his immediate boss, assistant commissioner Sukanti Chakrabarty, also told the CID that they were acting on orders from the senior officers. 

Now, after this episode at Nazrul Islam's office, Das would definitely have passed on the information to his seniors. They ought to have known that with an uncompromising officer like Nazrul Islam having learnt of the dirty tricks the Kolkata Police were up to, there were very good chances of their game being exposed. But fear of exposure and the consequences (if Islamblew the whistle, as he did later) is not something the rogues in uniform suffer from. Because, once again, they know that as long as their political masters, the CPI(M) leaders, are there to help them, they need not be afraid of anything, least of all incurring Nazrul Islam's disapproval and ire. I'm sure this would not have happened in any other state.

There have been so many glaring acts of omission, all of them deliberate, in the investigations after Rizwanur's body was found on the railway tracks that one can only wonder if there's rule of law in Bengal. The GRP did not photograph the body lying on the tracks or carry out an on-the-spot inquest. By the time the post-mortem was conducted, the case had hit the headlines in local newspapers, but the post mortem examination was not recorded on video or conducted by a penal of experts in the presence of independent witnesses, as is the norm in sensitive cases. Till date, the police or the CID have not lodged any case of unnatural death. The Police Commissioner submitted a false and misleading report to the Chief Minister's office immediately after Rizwanur's death. Heads should have rolled immediately after the injustices and wrongdoings stood exposed. But when they did, it was purely because of political reasons. So, before we heap abuse on Prasun Mukherjee and his band of rogues, let us reserve some anger for the powers behind them, the powers that had encouraged and emboldened them to behave and act in such a patently immoral, illegal and unconstitutional manner.