Kolkata: Seventeen years ago this month, Trinamool (TMC) chief Mamata Banerjee, then Leader of the Opposition in West Bengal, mounted a campaign to demand removal of then Kolkata Police commissioner Prasun Mukherjee. The Buddhadeb Bhattacharya-led CPI(M) government, facing pressure from the Opposition, gave in.
The case that led to Mukherjee’s removal involved the death of a 30-year-old computer graphic engineer who had married the daughter of a prominent Kolkata-based industrialist. Theirs was an interfaith marriage.
From a vocal opposition leader to chief minister, Banerjee’s stance on police accountability has come full circle, as evidenced by her decision Monday to shunt out Kolkata Police Commissioner Vineet Goyal.
A 1994-batch IPS officer, Goyal was transferred in line with the demands made by junior doctors protesting against the state’s handling of the RG Kar case. He had been heading the Kolkata Police since January 2022.
Banerjee announced Goyal’s transfer following a five-hour meeting with a delegation of junior doctors at her Kalighat residence, a week after she cited upcoming festivities and law and order concerns to retain him as Kolkata Police chief despite the chorus for his removal growing louder.
Accusing Goyal of being “incompetent and complacent”, junior doctors on strike had demanded that the government remove him—one among their five primary demands. Other demands were action against two deputy commissioner-rank officers, two health department officials, and security arrangements at state-run hospitals.
“I have agreed to 99 percent of their demands and request them to resume their duties,” Banerjee said during a midnight news briefing, adding Goyal wanted to step down on account of doctors’ loss of trust in him.
Banerjee also announced the transfers of Deputy Commissioner of the North Division, Abhishek Gupta, Director of Medical Education (DME) Dr Kaustav Nayak and Director of Health Services (DHS) Dr Debashis Halder.
This sequence of events is likely to have been a reminder of sorts for Banerjee, who had forced the then CPI(M) government in the state to shunt out IPS officer Prasun Mukherjee as Kolkata Police chief in 2007.
The Rizwanur Rahman case
On 21 September 2007, the dead body of 30-year-old Rizwanur Rahman was found on the railway tracks between Dum Dum and Bidhan Nagar Road stations in Kolkata, with injuries and his head smashed. In a police complaint he filed that same day, his brother alleged that he suspected the hand of industrialist Ashok Kumar Todi in Rahman’s death.
Rahman had married Todi’s daughter Priyanka on 18 August that year and was reportedly being pressured by the police at Todi’s behest to end the marriage, which the girl’s family refused to accept.
The interfaith couple was informally summoned to the police headquarters at least three times, based on an abduction complaint filed by Ashok Todi, where senior IPS officers tried convincing them to end their marriage.
During a press conference following Rahman’s death, then Kolkata Police chief Prasun Banerjee had justified the alleged intervention by the police. “This is how we have been dealing with such cases and will continue to in future … if the police don’t act in such cases, who will? The PWD?”
Such statements by the police, combined with furor over the circumstances surrounding Rahman’s death and the police’s role in the case, put the then CPI(M) government on the spot. Mamata Banerjee, who rushed to Rahman’s family home in Park Circus soon after his death, latched on to the issue and demanded accountability from the government.
“By keeping officers in their posts despite allegations, doesn’t it mean they are tampering with evidence? Only when leaders from the party speak, transfers and suspension of officers take place in this regime,” she had said.
Faced with immense pressure from the Opposition and civil society, then chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya was forced to transfer Kolkata Police chief Mukherjee and four others, including two IPS officers, a day after the Calcutta High Court ordered a CBI probe into Rahman’s death.
The Supreme Court upheld the HC’s decision in a 2011 decision.
The CBI concluded that Rahman’s was death by suicide and charged seven, including Ashok Todi and three police officers, with abetment to suicide. The agency also recommended departmental action against Mukherjee for their alleged role in the case. Todi sought the dismissal of charges against him but the Calcutta HC rejected his pleas in an order in 2017.
Interestingly, in the 2011 assembly elections, Banerjee gave a TMC ticket to Rahman’s brother Rukbanur. He won the election and continues to represent the Chapra seat in Nadia district in the assembly.
‘Belated, but step in right decision’
Asked about what role the Rahman case played in the fall of the CPI(M) government and Mamata’s rise to power, Kolkata-based political analyst Udayan Bandyopadhyay said public opinion was against the ruling dispensation at the time in light of the Singur and Nandigram agitations.
“In 2007, the Kolkata Police commissioner was removed for uttering some unethical words in the Rizwanur case … In the long run it was not the removal of the commissioner of police but rural misadventures of the government that worked as a catalyst and led to its fall.”
On how the fallout of that case is different from the current political situation in West Bengal, he told ThePrint, “This time the main issue is a horrific crime committed by someone and almost a total breakdown of normalcy in urban life, especially after the sudden attack on RG Kar hospital on the night of 14 August. The commissioner of police could not anticipate this attack by hooligans, and he admitted intelligence failure.”
“Nothing worked positively in favour of the state government afterwards. So, it’s quite natural for junior doctors to raise the demand for removal of commissioner of police for they are agitating against the threat culture in hospitals and demanding security. Now the government has accepted their demand, and it seems to be a transparent gesture,” Bandyopadhyay added.
To political analyst Snigdhendu Bhattacharya, Banerjee’s decision to cede ground to protesting doctors is belated, but a step in the right direction.
“She has done what she should have done earlier. She needed to defuse the agitation, lest it spread further. There were genuine public grievances over what the people perceived as attempts at a cover-up,” he told ThePrint.
(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)
Mamata Banerjee fought for Rizwanur simply because of his religion. It helped her wean away Muslim votes from the Left Front. The Muslims, till then, used to vote en-masse for the Left parties. Rizwanur case changed the equation. Mamata was successful in portraying herself as the protector of Muslims and gained their trust and votes.
If the victim in RG Kar hospital rape-murder case had been a Muslim, Mamata Banerjee would have reacted very differently.