On October 13, 2007 – three weeks after computer graphics designer Rizwanur Rahman’s body was recovered from next to the railway tracks in the outskirts of Kolkata – when erstwhile West Bengal chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee landed up at the Park Circus doorstep of Kishwar Jahan, all that the inconsolable mother of the victim could say to the leader was “mujhe insaaf chahiye (I want justice)”.
15 years on, that spectre of justice seems to have returned to haunt Bhattacharjee’s successor, Mamata Banerjee.
Four days have passed since Anis Khan, a former student of Aliah University, was allegedly thrown off the rooftop of his house in Howrah’s Amta and killed by a group of men donning police uniforms who raided his residence in the early hours of Saturday. The state police have made little headway in nabbing the possible culprits.
Anis’s father Salem Khan quietly turned down Banerjee’s offer to come and meet her at the state secretariat and repeated what the hapless and now late mother of Rizwanur had uttered a decade and half ago: “Amar shudhu nyay bichar chai (I only want justice).”
Banerjee has already constituted a three-member special investigation team (SIT) under the leadership of Gyanwant Singh, ADG (CID), and has mandated it to solve the case and submit a report in 15 days. Singh, interestingly, was one of the accused in the high-profile Rizwanur Rahman case in his then capacity of DC (Headquarters) of the Kolkata Police.
The victim’s family has been firmly demanding a CBI probe on the grounds that it has no faith in the state police which had consistently ignored Khan’s pleas of protection from the threats he had been subjected to on account of his political activism. In fact, Khan, reportedly, had multiple cases pending against him including one where he was charged with the molestation of a minor under the stringent POCSO Act.
Khan was known to be an active member of the newly formed Indian Secular Front, which tied up with the Left and Congress and fought the Trinamool Congress and BJP in the 2021 state polls.
The family’s demand for a CBI inquiry has found resonance amid a section of locals in Amta who were seen gathered in large numbers and holding placards in support of their demand outside the victim’s residence when SIT members visited the scene of the crime on Tuesday and even resisted the personnel’s entry into the village.
Clearly the chief minister’s assurance of an “impartial probe and quick delivery of justice” has failed to cut ice with these aggrieved citizens, a significant number of whom are Muslims.
Anis’s death has, naturally, sparked large-scale protests amid the fraternity engaged in students’ politics in Kolkata and activists belonging to camps opposing the state’s ruling dispensation.
Many believe that the unruly demonstrations witnessed in the city on Tuesday after a large number of students from Aliah University, Khan’s alma mater, took to the streets with an intention to reach the Writers’ Building and made the city police run helter-skelter because of their frequently changed rally route to avoid interception by authorities and SFI activists clashing with Trinamool-backed non-teaching staff at Jadavpur University during a strike sponsored by the former are merely preludes to more such activities planned.
The suspension of three personnel at Amta police station on the grounds of dereliction of duty has also had little impact on the dissenters. Quite the contrary. It set off a fresh political row with BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari claiming that the move “to penalise junior police personnel was made to shield the senior officers” responsible for the tragedy.
But the measure should have been the first administrative step after the crime and not one that comes three days late. After all, it was the responsibility of ASI Nirmal Das, Constable Jitendra Hembram and Home Guard Kashinath Bera who were on duty at the thana on the night of the incident and respond immediately the SOS call of the victim’s father at 2.30am and not wait for seven more hours to reach his house.
Their subsequent enthusiasm to remove the body for autopsy without family members being present has also come under the scanner.
It’s interesting, though, that the penal measure against late action would itself come quite late in the day.
Adhikari’s allegations notwithstanding, the BJP’s Bengal unit finds itself in a precarious dilemma over the issue. In the last 48 hours, the party has abruptly changed its pre-announced protest programmes at least twice without providing clear and convincing reasons.
First, the party’s Kolkata district committee changed its agenda for a march to “protest Anis Khan murder” to a march to “protest the police action at a school in Daribhit” which took place in September 2018 in Islampur, Uttar Dinajpur. The party’s minority morcha then cancelled its announced programme to visit Khan’s house without telling why but perceptively upon instructions from the state leadership.
Observers say that Anis’s active involvement in anti-NRC-CAA programmes in the past has forced the BJP to maintain distance despite its eagerness to dig into the political dust-up the issue has already created.
For Mamata Banerjee, though, the task is not so complicated. All she needs to do is to fulfil the wishes of Anis’s father and deliver justice as quickly as possible. The Rizwanur Rehman incident dealt a body blow to Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s popularity at the time, many say he failed to recover from it despite axing the city’s top cop, Prasun Mukherjee. Banerjee surely knows that history has an uncanny knack to repeat itself.
As for Gyanwant Singh, this is surely a chance to set the record straight.
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