The age-old phrase ‘Vinash Kaale Vipreet Buddhi’ was top of my mind as the events unfolded on Rakshabandhan Day in Kolkata. The irony of summoning two highly respected, senior Kolkata doctors to Police Headquarters—Lalbazar—just for demanding justice for the rape-murder victim (now named “Tilottama”) on the very day when sisters tied rakhis on the wrists of their brothers with the inherent promise of protection and love, clearly escaped the city’s police brass.
So the police were taken aback when instead of two doctors and their lawyers, a sea of humanity—all medics—marched to the gates of Lalbazar with them. Then came the equally unprecedented spectacle of the gates of the venerable building being shut and chained to prevent hundreds of doctors from entering to stand with their medical brethren. As expected, the two gentlemen were let off in an hour, making it very apparent that the intention was only to intimidate.
And to drive the message home, the ruling party spokespersons began to cast aspersions on the doctors’ solidarity, claiming the people of Bengal were getting angry with the medics for “neglecting” their duties by continuing their protests. They hinted that patients were being “diverted” to private hospitals on purpose, and that the doctors were not really rallying for justice but for money. These political mouthpieces seemed unaware of how out of sync they sounded.
The people of Kolkata—and Bengal—are not buying any of that, evidently, as the doctors are still getting their support and sympathy. Somehow, the gruesome rape-murder of that one exceptionally dedicated doctor has touched a chord and made people put their own troubles aside and focus on the bigger issue that the case has brought forth—the deep-set rot in the system that needs to be cleansed. Justice for Tilottama means more than just catching one rapist.
Also on Rakshabandhan Day, demonstrators, mostly from the community of artists—musicians, dancers, actors, directors, artists—marched in protest again, and pointed out how previous cases of rape-murder had been buried or botched, the victims, families and supporters vilified. Two women fighting for their friend who was raped and killed at Kamduni were branded Maoists by the CM, the morals of the victim of Madhyamgram had been questioned…
Even the advocates of Bengal—among them, grey-haired, senior-most veterans who are more familiar with the highest courtrooms of India than the potholed streets of Kolkata—marched in the humid heat to demand that the “real culprits” be brought to justice. Lawyers are very careful about their choice of words, and hence the use of “real” and plural “culprits” showed they are profoundly sceptical about the Kolkata Police speedily parading one man as the rapist.
The lawyers’ march also revealed another piquant ploy of the ruling dispensation: an attempt to co-opt the protest. A section of them were led by Trinamool Congress MP and very vocal senior advocate Kalyan Banerjee, also loudly demanding ‘justice’. Who was he demanding that from was unclear. And the unseemly verbal fracas that erupted between him and another lawyer aligned to a Left party soon after the march was over, cast doubts about Banerjee’s purpose!
But if the previous day had presented unprecedented images of arch-rivals Mohun Bagan and East Bengal fans protesting side by side for justice for Tilottama, even older Kolkatans would be hard-pressed to recall another incident that has triggered such a reaction from the entire gamut of society. The monster rallies of the ruling parties of Bengal in the centre of Kolkata barely get participation from the type of people who have been rallying sans political flags for 10 days.
It seems the rape-murder of this doctor has opened the floodgates: of the people’s disgust with the functioning of the government, their doubts about the impartiality and intention of the police, their frustration with the complicity of officials, ruling party politicians and goons in every institution and every aspect of quotidian life. So they are out protesting on the streets in Bengal or even watching and cheering them from home, tied by the common thread of total exasperation.
Many people may be aware that in 2018 the West Bengal government withdrew the general consent for the Central Bureau of Investigation to probe crimes in the state saying that the central agency was infringing its sovereignty. What are the chances that the state police or the administration will actually assist the CBI in this case given the high likelihood that the crime has wider ramifications than the sexual intentions of one perverted police-approved ‘civil volunteer’?
The ruling party’s apologists—in the political arena and elsewhere—have also been trying to posit Tilottama’s rape and murder as a consequence of patriarchy, so that they can universalise the case by drawing parallels to similarly heinous rape-murders in other states—run by other parties, of course. But those who live in Bengal know that Tilottama’s case was not just about one man trying to assert his power over a woman. It was the consequence of a wider malaise.
They know that the brutalisation of her body indicates she was being punished for far more, and by many more. That she had fallen foul of something more sinister than one lascivious little man. The way the entire administration—of the college as well as the state—and the police were hellbent on steering the probe in a certain direction, and the sudden advent of a mob to ransack the building where Tilottama was raped and killed, smacked of a desperate coverup.
Those tasked with saving the CM’s face (and perhaps gaddi as well) seem to be unwilling to accept that their ploy to brand the protests as political—though the marchers are visibly apolitical—and attempts to deride the marchers’ credentials and motives had been ineffective or counter-productive. The heavy-handed, colonial-era Vipreet Buddhi of the Kolkata Police is not working. The ruling party and its leader desperately need a new game plan to avoid ‘Vinash Kaal’.
The author is a freelance writer. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.
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