Recent developments in West Bengal – centred on the rape and murder of an 11-year-old girl, the subsequent lynching of an innocent man, and the police killing of one of the accused – have exposed serious shortcomings in the two-month-old Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government. The incident occurred in Baruipur, near Kolkata. Women’s safety was central to the BJP’s campaign against the previous Mamata Banerjee administration, with the 2024 rape and murder of a trainee doctor at Kolkata’s RG Kar Medical College cited as evidence of governmental failure on this front. Responding to the latest case, Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari asserted that his government was making every effort to prevent such incidents, reaffirming what he called a long-standing commitment to protecting women and girls. This position merely echoes the assurances offered by Mamata Banerjee’s government. Meanwhile, the victim’s family has alleged that the police were slow in the initial stages of their investigation, raising questions about accountability.
The discovery of the young girl’s body triggered mob violence, resulting in the lynching of a man whom police later confirmed was not a suspect. Adhikari had a communal take on the incident, insinuating that political interests were in play, and “fundamentalists” may have targeted the man based on his Hindu identity, given that the murdered girl was Muslim. Since the protests started, police have arrested more than 30 people. Bringing a communal or political angle into the rape and murder of a child is perverse. Such divisive narratives only serve to divert public attention from the heinous crime, undermining the pursuit of justice for the victim.
The state government constituted a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to probe the crime, leading to four arrests. However, one of the accused men has been killed in a police encounter. The authorities offered a familiar justification: the accused allegedly tried to snatch a service rifle, forcing the police to shoot. This reflects a troubling trend where instant justice and encounter killings are becoming normalised. Senior BJP leader Dilip Ghosh defended the police action, labelling critics “anti-socials”. Yet, most encounters are calculated, extrajudicial executions rather than acts of self-defence. They are a gross violation of due process and the rule of law. Governments are elected with a constitutional commitment to uphold the law. Encounter killings and “justice” through bulldozer action are fundamentally illegal. People accused of crimes, even the most heinous of them, have a right to a fair trial. The police are only investigators with no legal right to punish the offenders through arbitrary executions. (Source: DH)
