In practice, however, the method is as simple as it looks like. The police take as long as possible in reaching the crime scene, especially if political parties are suspected to be involved. This gives ample time for anti-socials to remove telltale signs of crime and remove people already dead or injured. After most locals have fled fearing police harassment, the men in uniform arrive and make a show of ‘interrogating people’.

By this time, those actually involved, regardless of political affiliations, could well be miles away. They may be in another state, another town. Mostly the police do not arrest anyone. If at all, only one or two persons are rounded up. Produced in court, most get sent to jail custody, fuelling intense media speculation.

The courts in Bengal have pulled up police investigators time and again for their shoddy work, as most crimes remain unsolved, often in scathing language. Once an inspector was harangued for having produced a suspect only in his ganji(banyan) before the judge! It says much for the fortitude of the men in uniform that such public castigations, sometimes directed at the highest functionaries in the force, do not make much difference to their apparent composure.

Presently, a similar police ‘investigation’ is on into another explosion, this time at Pichkuri village at Ausgram, Burdwan district. Here a few days ago, the local office of the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) was razed to the ground following a major blast late on Sunday(May 7, 2017) night. The intensity of the blast blew off not only the roof of the two-storey house, not a single wall was left standing!

Unconfirmed reports said that one person, local TMC worker Hantu Sheikh was killed on the spot, while a few others were seriously hurt. They were all whisked away by shadowy figures under cover of darkness. Part of a transformer and a tube-well were also blown off, plunging the area into darkness.

Local TMC leader Anubrata Mondal — he achieved fame for his clarion call at a public meeting urging people to attack policemen with bombs, if they ‘crossed limits’ — denied any party involvement, let alone casualties. CPI(M) goons, according to him, had hurled ‘several bombs’ at the building, targeting TMC workers, injuring some, but killing no one. Later, other TMC leaders hastened to clarify that BJP workers too, had been involved!

However, Hantu has not been seen since the blast, nor the others known to have been injured. Many local houses have been damaged. Media persons found most houses locked up and deserted. There was a pall of fear and silence. A few local stragglers said they had neither seen nor heard anything, before scurrying away.

Local leaders Achintya Choudhury and Sandip Nandi, of the CPI(M) and the BJP respectively, said that Mondal’s armed supporters and followers had virtually cleaned out the village and adjacent areas of other opposition parties. Remaining residents had to pay protection money to the TMC for their ‘safety’.

Choudhury said that the nature of the explosion made it clear that an accident had occurred inside the house where bombs were being made and stored. Nandi felt that given the record of the local police in tackling crime, only a probe by the central NIA could help unearth the truth.

Nandi’s views seemed corroborated by the way local police began their ‘work’. After cordoning off the house, the police left. Local thana personnel again arrived after about 20 hours. It was not clear whether they included any forensic expert. There was no press briefing, let alone any arrests or interrogation of suspects, etc.

But local police confirmed to visiting newsmen, ‘an investigation was on’. So what about the casualty details, how many killed or wounded? Sorry, no information yet.

The next day, a BJP delegation led by Mr Sayantan Bose and Ms Locket Chatterjee visited the damaged house, spending some 20 minutes. Most people avoided talking to them because of fear. BJP leaders claimed that this explosion had a ‘jihadist connection,’ as had happened at Khagragarh, which the state police had done its best to cover up.

At Khagragarh in Burdwan district, three members of the Jamatul Mujahideen Bangladesh(JMB), a banned Islamist extremist outfit, were killed. The house they had rented belonged to a local TMC leader who was never questioned by the state police. The JMB men and women were making and storing bombs, which were being smuggled across the birder into Bangladesh for use against the Awami League and the police.

Bengal police had initially written off the Khagragarh blast as a ‘gas cylinder explosion’. They destroyed the explosives stored before the NIA or the forensic experts could examine them. Chief minister Mamata Banerjee criticised the NIA for ‘harassing innocent people from a particular community’.

Only the determined effort of NIA officials with help from Bangladesh investigation officials led to the arrest of over 20 men and women from various areas in India and Bangladesh.

Even as the Trinamool government tried to play down the latest bomb blast at Pichkuri village, with no senior minister bothering to issue a public explanation, disturbing questions remained.

What exactly had happened and who were involved? And why so many major explosions were occurring without the state police being able to do anything about them? Why does the central government not pull up the state?

Only days ago, on April 22, at least 8 people had been killed in another explosion at Darbarpur village at Birbhum district, where again the ubiquitous Mr Mondal of the TMC reigns supreme. The explosion followed a clash between two groups both reportedly supporting the TMC! Local TMC leaders tried to gloss over the matter claiming that groups of anti-socials involved in illegal sand mining were fighting each other.

And what of the explosion at a ‘factory’ employing child labour at Pingla, West Midnapore, on May 7, 2015? At least 11 people, mostly young children were killed instantaneously, when the big bang occurred and blew them to smithereens. ‘Little limbs were hanging from the nearby branches of trees, their leaves spattered with blood’, an eyewitness had told the electronic media. Local media reports suggested that a TMC leader was running the local sweatshop producing ‘firecrackers, which had accidentally gone off’.

The local SP endorsed the ‘firecrackers’ version when media persons contacted her. She had no explanation as to how the sweatshop exploiting poor child labourers from Murshidabad and Malda districts, was being allowed to function by the local administration.

One last word: this particular official is a favourite of the Chief Minister who is also the home minister, Ms Mamata Banerjee, and is frequently singled out for special praise.
(IPA Service)