Cops masked as scribes

 

 

Police are expected to go after impersonators; not become impostors themselves. Yet this is exactly what the West Bengal police are being accused of. Posing as journalists of two non-existent publications – one as a reporter of Asian News Agency of Singapore and the other as a camerman of Tazaa TV channel of Kolkata – they arrested Chatradhar Mahato, the most vocal face of Lalgarh’s Police Santras-Birodhi Janaganer Committee (People’s Committee against Police Atrocities).

Angered by the police action, Press Club Kolkata has shot off letters to Union Home Minister P Chidambaram, West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, state Chief Secretary Asok Mohan Chakrabarti and Home Secretary Ardhendu Sen, condemning the manner in which Mahato was arrested.

This masquerading by the police as media persons has also drawn the ire of prominent intellectuals. Mahasweta Devi, poets Sankhya Ghosh and Joy Goswami, theatre personalities Bibhas Chakraborty and Kaushik Sen, novelist and green activist Joya Mitra and the Association for People’s Democratic Rights (APDR) have begun a mass dharna at Esplanade – just as they did when Nandigram erupted.

Says Premananda Ghosh, president of Press Club Kolkata: “We have nothing to say about the arrest. But by posing as journalists these cops have certainly endangered our lives. They even used Press identity cards. People will lose faith in journalists, and this is what we are protesting against.” As Arundhati Roy points out, the cops’ motive was to make sure no news of atrocities in the Lalgarh and Junglemahal areas came out.

Journalist associations and district journalist bodies in West Midnapore, Burdwan and elsewhere have all come down heavily on the police. In the initial days of the Lalgarh mayhem journalists had felt free to report from the troubled areas. But after the Joint Forces Operation only a few “embedded” scribes were allowed in – though even they came under the police baton after they were spotted photographing police atrocities on innocent women, children and tribals.

Says Chandan Routh, a staffer of the Kolkata-based Dainik Statesman who saw it all: “All this is bound to create deep mistrust between us and common people.” A high level source in a central security agency told TSI on condition of anonymity that the police action was particularly reprehensible because Mahato is not a Maoist. According to him the Centre has advised the state not to arrest him because it would only make the task of the joint forces even more complicated than it already is.” APDR leader Sujato Bhadra says police have broken the law by arresting him in civil dress and without any arrest warrant, thereby flouting the newly amended section of 50A of the Criminal Procedure Code. “The impersonators can definitely be punished under this section,” Bhadra says.

Barun Dasgupta, former Guwahati bureau chief of The Hindu, and others in the journalistic fraternity, want the police to explain how they managed to obtain the Press accreditation cards issued by the state government. “Journalists who have been working for more than three years are entitled to apply for the card, subject to the approval of the accreditation committee consisting of journalists and Press photographers. A representative of the state government is a member secretary of the committee. But in this case the sleuths had never worked as scribes; nor had the accreditation committee issued any Press cards to them. It is clear that the state is guilty of manipulation and has violated the law.”

In public prosecutor Kazi Shafiullah’s view Mahato is fully entitled to lodge a complaint against the policemen. Says he: “Legally there is nothing that can stop police from doing as they did, but then such action is morally unacceptable. I agree with the scribes who fear that this impersonation by the cops will make their job a great deal tougher, and that they will lose their credibility in people’s eyes.”