The Birbhum massacre happened on March 21, 2022 but West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee met the families of the victims at Bogtui village in Birbhum district, only more than 72 hours later, on March 24, 2022, showcasing Mamata’s criminal apathy and complete collapse of law and order machinery in the State. Mamata is also the Home Minister of West Bengal,which makes her doubly culpable. The Calcutta High Court on March 25, 2022, ordered the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to probe the Birbhum violence case in which over eight persons were set on fire, following the killing of a local Trinamool Congress (TMC) leader Bhadu Sheikh. Bhadu Sheikh was infamous for his illegal sand mining business and was feared by the locals in Birbhum, as he epitomized TMC’s culture of goondaism and mobocracy. That certainly of course does not justify Bhadu Sheikh’s murder. Equally, let it not be lost on anyone that the TMC under the Mamata Banerjee regime has started normalising violence and vandalism, with local TMC goons abetting a culture of intimidation. Whether Bhadu Sheikh was killed due to a rivalry between two opposite gangs is not the point of discussion here. The moot point is, after Bhadu Sheikh’s murder, why was retributive violence unleashed upon hapless people who were set on fire in full public glare? Where was the State police? Why did it turn a blind eye to the pleas for help by the families of the victims? After the fire, one victim died in the hospital but why was a statement not recorded under Section 161 and 164 of the CrPC? Why were there no CCTVs at the crime site which was barely a few metres away from the local police thana? Why was forensic evidence not duly collected from the crime scene? Why was videography of postmortems not done?
The Court has ordered the CBI to submit a progress report on April 7, 2022. The very fact that the Calcutta HC had initiated a suo motu case, in the Birbhum violence, shows how the Court had little faith in the Mamata regime and rightfully so. Mamata Banerjee’s track record has only gone from bad to worse and in light of the deteriorating law and order situation in West Bengal, the Court took the right step in initiating a suo moto case and thereafter handing over the probe to the CBI, rather than leaving it to an SIT, monitored by the Bengal police, which has in any case, become a puppet at the hands of the Mamata Banerjee dispensation.
A bench, comprising chief justice Prakash Shrivastava and justice Rajarshi Bharadwaj, in fact, observed that in the interest of justice and considering the circumstances of the Birbhum case, the ongoing probe should be transferred to the CBI. Attempts were made to shield the guilty, said the Bengal Governor, in the aftermath of the Birbhum massacre and the Governor has every reason to feel that way, given the brazen impunity with which Mamata Banerjee has repeatedly undermined the office of the Governor, flouting established convention and constitutional procedures. More importantly, it is not just the Governor but even otherwise, it is now publicly only too well known that West Bengal tops the country in communal strifes, sexual violence against women, rapes, looting, arson, and more.
TMC’s shameful silence, connivance with the perpetrators and refusal to file complaints in cognizable offences in the post-poll violence that was unleashed last year in May 2021, in which numerous ordinary citizens including BJP and RSS workers and supporters were hacked to death, was condemned last year by a five-judge bench led by Rajesh Bindal of the Calcutta High Court. It is said almost 80000 Hindus had to flee Bengal fearing for their safety, after the TMC came back to power in May 2021 and within hours unleashed a horrific saga of violence against those who had not voted for the Party in the 2022 assembly elections. Mamata’s Khela Hobe is symbolic of State brutality and retribution, akin to the Middle Ages and that is precisely why she is unfit to be a national leader, her national aspirations notwithstanding.
One of the petitions before the Calcutta High Court, before the Court handed over the probe to the CBI, stated that the SIT spearheaded by a police officer (Gyaanwant Singh), of the Mamata Banerjee government to conduct the probe cannot be relied upon and will only act as a “slave of the ruling TMC party”. What this shows is that the general public has no confidence in the TMC regime. It is no secret that while Hindu votes got divided, Muslims voted en masse for Mamata’s Party and that is the only reason she came back to power in 2021, despite ten years of misgovernance and criminal apathy, to her discredit.
Various reports say that the Birbhum massacre took place, with full encouragement from the State police which directly reports to Mamata Banerjee. It is said that eyewitnesses of the terrifying massacre were threatened and all the village residents especially men, were forced to leave. Mamata Banerjee is nothing if not Hinduphobic. Questioning the West Bengal government’s curbs on Durga idol immersion, the Calcutta High Court On September 20, 2017 said, “The State cannot hinder a citizen’s right to practice religion on the basis of a mere assumption of law and order disruption and must provide sound reasons for doing so. Let them (Hindus and Muslims) live in harmony, do not create a line between them. People have the right to practice their religious activities, whichever community they may be of, and the State cannot put restrictions, unless it has a concrete ground to believe that two communities cannot live together.” From providing allowances to clerics, giving a free run to anti-Hindu rioters, to denying 300 Hindu families in Nalhati village in Birbhum district the right to celebrate Durga Pujo, to denying permission to RSS-BJP leaders to have meetings in Bengal under flimsy pretexts, Banerjee has left no stone unturned to woo the Muslim community and engage in rabid Muslim appeasement, only for the sake of vote-bank politics.
In April 2012, Banerjee announced an allowance of Rs 2500 for the Imams and Rs 1500 to muezzins, at a cost of Rs 126 crore annually to the State exchequer. Today, more than 97 % of West Bengal’s Muslim population has been recognised as Other Backward Classes (OBCs) and what is more, there has been five-fold jump in budgetary allocation for minority affairs.
But what is more dangerous is the rise in communal incidents. While the State recorded 27 incidents of violence in 2015 in which five persons died and 84 suffered injuries, the number of incidents almost doubled in 2017 when 58 incidents of violence were recorded, in which nine people lost their lives and 230 were injured. In 2016, there were 32 incidents of communal strife in the State. Clearly,it is not majoritarianism but minoritism that is the babe of Bengal.
The Canning riot happened in Feb 2013. The inclusion of a prominent leader of the Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Hind, Siddiqullah Chowdhury, in the TMC Ministry and sending Idris Ali (from the Basirhat constituency) to the Lok Sabha are also indicative of blatant minority appeasement. Both these radical Islamists were actively involved in the Kolkata riots of 2008, demanding the expulsion of Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasreen from Kolkata. In July 2017, Baduria in North 24 Parganas witnessed large-scale arson and rioting following a Facebook post that Muslims found to be offensive. The juvenile, alleged of posting, had already been arrested but a mob surrounded the police station, demanding that the juvenile be handed over to them so that they could punish him according to Shariah. Amidst all this, Mamata Banerjee remained a mute spectator, encouraging lumpen elements to run riot. Imagine, in a country like India, with almost 80% Hindu population, Muslims openly wanted to behead a minor for a harmless FB post, in Shariah style!! Things have come to this, only because Hindus are repeatedly being marginalised by the Mamata regime.
In January 2016,1.5 lakh Muslims assembled near Kaliachak taxi stand, Malda, demanding death for Kamlesh Tiwari, a leader associated with the Hindu Mahasabha. The Muslim mob blocked the roads, ransacked and torched the vehicles of not just civilians but even of the police and the Border Security Force (BSF). Later, they set the police station on fire, selectively attacked Hindu houses and shops, and damaged their properties, and once again the Hinduphobic Mamata Banerjee regime chose to turn a blind eye, allowing TMC goons and a bloodthirsty, radical, Islamist mob, to take law in their own hands. In the pursuit of votes, the TMC government did not even hesitate to interfere in the religious practices of Hindus. In a rerun of 2016, in 2017 again, a restriction was imposed on Durga idol immersion. The blatant communalism by the TMC was also noted by the Calcutta High Court, who, while passing an order on October 6, 2016 said, “There has been a clear endeavour on the part of the State Government to pamper and appease the minority section of the public at the cost of the majority section without there being any plausible justification. This is not only damaging the State’s social fabric but is also causing resentment among the common Bengalis.”
BR Ambedkar, in his book, Pakistan or the partition of India, wrote, “Appeasement sets no limits to the demands and aspirations of the aggressor. Appeasement means buying off the aggressor by conniving at his acts of murder, rape, arson, and loot against innocent persons who happen for the moment to be the victims of his displeasure”. It is not that Banerjee is not aware of what is happening on the ground, but, most surprisingly and rather appalling, instead of correcting her own policies, she seems to be relying on administrative might, political hubris and in the dictum, “Might is right.”
(To be continued…)
The writer is an Economist, National Spokesperson of the BJP and the Bestselling Author of ‘The Modi Gambit’. Views expressed are the writer’s personal. The second part of the article will be published next week.