Police bullets are only for criminals, insists Buddhadev

A senior Commission official agreed with the Opposition and the political critics of the statement that the “special chief ministrial directive is likely to be misused by the police”. He, however, said the Commission would wait for Principal Home Secretary’s clarification before deciding on its future course of action.

Though the Chairman of the West Bengal Human Rights Commission Justice Mukoolgopal Mukherjee said that the Commission will hold a special meeting to discuss the situation arising out of the Chief Minister’s direction to police to “shoot the armed criminals,” he felt that “the statement is not loaded against the Commission nor it was meant to undermine it.”

Various political parties, including the Trinamool Congress and the Congress, sensed “a sinster design to silence the political opponents of the CPI(M) in the state during the run up to the Assembly election”. Mamata Banerjee saw “a plot to use the police to kill the Opposition in places where the CPI(M) is busy in village takeover with the help of police.”ØAbdul Mannan, a senior Congress Lagislative Party leader and party chief whip, said: “If Bhattacharya feels that existing laws are not powerful enough to bring the criminals to books, he can always have more stringent laws without violating the Constitution.”ØInterestingly, Bhattacharya defended his stand yesterday saying. “Under the Constitution, the police have the right to shoot when it is confronted with armed criminals who are out to kill innocent people,” he explained.

Echoing Justice Mukherjee, a senior state government official said that since the Commission does not have any power to enforce its recommendation, “all we can do is to seek a clarification and decide what to do about the possibility of the direction being misused like it happened during the Naxalite movement in the state.”

Past records leave room for doubt
Though Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya has alleyed fears of the Opposition that the police firing is not “possible” on the political and trade union agitationists, a non-government human rights organisation, Association for Protection of the Democratic Rights, revealed that, since 1978, mostly non-criminal activists were targetted during all major police firing incidents.
* In 1978, a year after the CPI(M)-led Left Front assumed power in West Bengal, police firing in Marichjhapi on agitators claiming rehabilitation left 27 dead.

* In 1988, police opened fire on farmers agitating on the issue of electricity, left 2 dead in Nadia.* In 1993, Sealdah firing, which claimed seven victims, was ordered after a teacher was accused of travelling without railway ticket. In same year, about 13 youth Congress workers fell to police bullets near Writers’ Buildings while protesting against the Left Front government’s policies.

The APDR also recorded several instances of “fake enounters” during 1995-96-97 when “several innocent people died.” The rights body, which claims that the number of police firing victims have crossed the 700 mark, is currently compiling a list of such incidents where the police opened fire on non-criminals.ØAPDR secretary Tapas Chakraborty told The Indian Express said that the state government did not even bother to continue with the commissions it set up to inquire into firing. In November this year, the High Court ordered the State Government to allow the K Ganguli Commission to complete its inquiry. The Commission was set up to inquire into Sealdah police firing.