Bengal government failed in handling Kolkata rape
If the rape and murder of a junior doctor in a Kolkata hospital on August 9 is still attracting responses ranging from concern and horror to street protests even after a fortnight, it is mainly because of the poor handling of the incident by the Mamata Banerjee government. It was not only the insensitivity, some would say even callousness, that the government showed in dealing with an issue concerning women’s safety but also the failures of governance that it exposed that has kept the matter in a burning focus all these days. It may have served as a reminder of other failures of the past also. Politics was certainly at work, with Opposition parties finding it an opportunity to haul the government over the coals and to take advantage of the situation, but it was the government that created the opportunity for them.
The decisions and actions of the government from the beginning were wrong and could serve as textbook examples of how a government can lose control over a situation. The Principal of R G Kar Medical College and Hospital, Sandip Ghosh, was appointed as the head of another hospital within hours of his removal; the government also failed to prevent the midnight attack on protesting doctors and some demolition near the crime scene. Whatever the government did or its leaders said did not carry conviction about its sincerity and commitment to finding out the truth, and even led to suspicions that it wanted to cover up the crime and shield the guilty. Some leaders drew a Bangladesh parallel, and the Kolkata Police issued notices to those who criticised the Mamata government. There was a lot of whataboutery about rapes happening in other states, too. Whataboutery is employed usually as an indirect justification of a wrong action, and that’s not the right thing to do for a government, certainly not over a rape-and-murder matter.
The courts have also come down heavily on the government’s conduct, taken decisions that show that it did not act right, and made sharp and critical observations. The Calcutta High Court took away the investigation of the case from the state police to the CBI. The Supreme Court took suo moto cognisance of the case. A Supreme Court judge observed that “the entire procedure followed by Bengal Police is something I have not encountered in 30 years”. What all these showed was the comprehensive failure of the state establishment -- the government, the police, the leaders -- to serve the cause of justice for the victim of a most gruesome and heinous act. The government’s failures appealed to the basic sense of justice of society and that is what is keeping the matter alive and helping politics to drive it.