By IANS,
Kolkata : Hours after two senior police officers attacked the media which had praised them for cracking the sensational Park Street “rape” case, West Bengals’ Marxists Monday accused Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee of forcing them to make the comments and warned that civil servants with self-esteem would quit the state if she did not mend her ways.
Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime) Damayanti Sen – who has been credited in sections of the media for achieving the breakthrough in the case by working against her own organisation, Monday rushed to the secretariat to meet Banerjee and “clarify” her position on the entire issue.
Joint Commissioner (Headquarters) Jawed Shamim, who is said to have lent support to Sen in the probe, accompanied her in meeting the chief minister and then the duo jointly briefed the media, scotching talks of a “division” within the police ranks and crediting the whole organisation for the effort.
Leader of Opposition Surjya Kanta Mishra of the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M), however, found the chief minister’s hand in the entire episode.
“The police officers had said what they were asked to say by the chief minister. What can the police officers do, they had to save their jobs. CM has earlier rubbished the rape reports by saying it is a cooked up story,” said Mishra.
Mocking Banerjee for time and again repenting for the shortage of IAS-IPS officers, he said if such things are repeated, no civil servants with self-esteem will remain in the state.
“What the police commissioner and the chief minister had said was contradictory to the outcome of the investigation. They (Sen and Shamin) have said what they were asked to. This is unfortunate,” said Mishra.
The controversy arose after city police chief R.K. Pachnanda, while briefing the media Thursday on the allegation of rape by a 37 year old Anglo-Indian woman, termed the entire issue as a “campaign to malign the police and the government”.
A short while before Pachnanda’s media meet, Banerjee had also described the matter as “cooked up” and said it was an attempt to malign the government.
Mishra also referred to the Rizwanur Rehman death case in 2007, when the Left Front government removed the then police commissioner after he reached conclusions even before the investigation was over.
“She (Banerjee) has said earlier on many occasions that law will take its own course. But the comment she had made in the rape case doesn’t reflect that she allows the law to take its own course,” he said.