In West Bengal, a crime, the mob and state abdication

Thirty kilometres away from Kolkata, a story of serial state failures plays out. First, there was a heinous crime, the assault and murder of an 11-year-old, allegedly by four men, which sparked protests and demands for justice. The brutalising of a child can shake faith in the government’s ability to protect the most vulnerable. Then, a man was lynched by a mob in Baruipur in South 24 Parganas district for the murder — it turned out that he, reportedly, was not responsible for it. Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari asked the police to identify lapses and an SIT was constituted. That, however, cannot mask the third failure: The “encounter” of an accused and the ruling party’s defence of that action. The framing of the lynching by Chief Minister Adhikari is deeply problematic. He has sought to let his government’s law enforcement off the hook, and spoken of the mob violence as a “political conspiracy” with a “communal connection”. State BJP president Dilip Ghosh has labelled those questioning the encounter and the subversion of due process as “anti-social”. “The criminal and those who support criminals should receive equal treatment,” he said. These statements from the highest political quarters are unseemly. They can even be read as signalling a tolerance of, or impunity for, extra-judicial action and state vigilantism. They are especially jarring coming from a ruling party that has made big promises on law and order and women’s safety. As part of poriborton, the BJP promised the West Bengal voter relief from a ruling dispensation whose politics crept into all institutions and cramped all spaces, from the economy to crime and justice. By looking for fall guys for its lapses, the Adhikari government is not getting off to a good start. It must, going forward, underline its respect for institutions, due process and fundamental rights, of victims and also the accused. The first step to that end must be a delinking of law and order and partisan politics.