Twice during the present week itself (Feb 14 to Feb 19), the ruling Left Front copped acute political embarrassment. First, late on the night of Feb 14, at Barasat, about 30 kilometres to the north of Kolkata, schoolboy Rajib Das (15) was beaten and stabbed to death by three drunk anti socials. He was bringing home his elder sister Rinku, a call centre employee, from work. Rinku, whom the attackers tried to rape, did her best to get the policemen who did guard duty at the nearby bungalows where the DM of North 24 Parganas and the SP live, to help her. The police refused. They could not leave their assigned spots, because” rules are rules.”

An elderly local tried to intervene, but the armed gang proved too strong for him and the girl. She escaped rape, but lost his brother in the process. He was due to appear in his secondary exams a few days later!

The last nail on his coffin was the total absence of any treatment at the local sarkari hospital to which the boy was somehow taken, there being neither any medicine, nor anyone on emergency duty close on midnight. A doddering old clerk had pointedly insisted on filling several forms in detail, even as anxious locals had carried the sinking victim to the hospital. Rules are rules.

Purely taken as a commentary on how West Bengal has been run by the ruling LF during its tenure — a period it has been earnestly fighting off imperialist conspiracies in Iraq and Cuba from Kolkata and the anti-people Manmohan Singh government at the Centre! — the details could not be more appropriate.

Second, on Feb 18, the Kolkata High Court ordered the probe into the Netai killings in Midnapore district some weeks ago — armed CPI(M) supporters at a makeshift camp shot dead 9 poor people including 4 housewives, fearing a mass attack--- to be handed over to the CBI immediately. The state CID palpably failed to make any progress in its “investigations” all these weeks.

The first incident, as expected, was universally condemned by common people. Both the CPI(M) and its bete noire the Trinamool Congress tried to play politics over Rajiv’s corpse, claiming him as a “supporter”! This was their first reaction even as Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and Union Minister Saugata Roy made a point of visiting the struggling Das household to score political points. Both parties were roundly booed by angry locals, who called for action. Amazingly, in their press briefings, senior officials did not bat an eyelid in claiming that the kutcheri area — where the DM, the SP and the ASP live and the Barasat court has its sessions — has been notorious for drunkenness and snatchings! And the unfortunate Rinku was described as a “divorcee who returns home late at night.” Not a word here about eve teasing and drunken revelries within the court compounds every evening, or the brewing of illicit liquor that goes on openly.

This is what is meant by “running a pro-people administration, not only from Writers’ Building, but with the help of the masses”, in Left jargon.

In televised discussions, sections of the invited audience became incensed when CPI(M) leaders tried to explain away the killing of Rajiv as “a perversion that results from the consumerist culture that capitalism generates”! On one channel, the show was interrupted as angry audience members first clashed and then swarmed over the dais.

The High Court directive was just as damaging. In earlier hearings, the court asked of the Advocate General, how was it that most of the accused at Netai were reportedly moving around freely, but the police could not arrest them. The AG said that six people were being sought but they had escaped to other states. The court asked, had the government declared them offenders, published their pictures, taken any steps at all? The AG promised to do all this.

Lo and behold, two of these, CPI(M) lightweights, believed to be in “other states”, were suddenly found and arrested by the police, but not their leaders.

Not satisfied, the court then specifically asked officers to co operate with the CBI, to whom the probe was being transferred and appealed to officers to “go for the top”, i.e., to find out and arrest the brains behind the killings, no matter how high or powerful they were. Clearly the court wanted the probe to be carried out seriously not sparing even district or state leaders, who supervised the running of such camps run by the CPI(M).

The reaction of the CPI(M) ? South Kolkata leader Robin Deb said that even the CBI had not always been succeeded in solving the cases referred to it. Not a word of apology about the killings or the slightest censure of the pathetic efforts of the state police! (IPA Service)