THE death of two young men in police firing in Islampur in West Bengal’s Uttar Dinajpur district has ignited a political backlash across the State and once again brought to the fore the State government’s intolerance of protest and the heavy-handed means the police use to suppress it. The incident was triggered by an agitation over the appointment of teachers in Daribhit High School in Islampur. The students of the school had been protesting against the appointment of an Urdu teacher and a Sanskrit teacher at a time when they felt there was an acute need for teachers of core subjects. Matters came to a head when on September 20 the two new teachers, posted by the State Education Department, arrived at the school premises to join work. The students’ agitation, allegedly backed by the local people, turned violent, and when the police arrived, the school premises had virtually turned into a battle zone.
The protesters, who had blocked the main gate, refused to disperse on the orders of the police and attacked them with sticks and stones. As the clash intensified, Mou Sarkar, a Class 12 student, called up her elder brother Rajesh and asked him to come and pick her up. Nineteen-year-old Rajesh, an alumnus of Daribhit and studying in an industrial training institute, went to the school to pick her up and was shot in the back, allegedly by the police. By the time he was taken to the Islampur Subdivisional Hospital, he had died. Another former student, Tapash Burman, 21, was also shot at, allegedly by the police, and he died the following day. Like Rajesh, Tapash was apparently not involved in the agitation; he was killed outside his sweet shop next to the school.
Fourteen police personnel were also injured in the clash. Seven people, including some Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) workers, were arrested in connection with the violence.
Sujit, Rajesh’s younger brother and a former student of the school, said that the bullets fired at Rajesh came from a police van. He also said that the agitation seeking teachers for core subjects had been on for quite some time. “The school does not have teachers for the main subjects, but they have hired teachers for Urdu and Sanskrit, which are considered peripheral. So naturally the students began to protest. They said, give us teachers for the regular subjects first, and then you can hire teachers for Sanskrit and Urdu,” he told Frontline .
Demand for CBI probe
As of October 2, the bodies of Rajesh and Tapash were not yet cremated because the families were demanding a probe by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). The school remains closed, with the women of the region, led by the mothers of the two victims, staging an agitation outside the premises.
“Our demand is first let the CBI investigation begin and then the school can resume. Once the school reopens, people will slowly forget the incident,” Sujit, a first-year student of science in Islampur College, told Frontline . He dismissed allegations by the police and the State government that “outsiders” were involved in the protest. “The video footage clearly shows that the agitators were mainly students. There is a marketplace right next to the school. It is likely that the villagers present there at the time rushed to the rescue of the children, finding them under attack from the police,” said Sujit.
Meanwhile, the fathers of Rajesh and Tapash were taken by the BJP to New Delhi where the they met President Ram Nath Kovind and asked for a fresh post-mortem of their sons’ bodies and a CBI investigation.
Although the State government maintains that the police had not opened fire and had used rubber bullets, local people insist that the police had indeed shot at the agitators. Even the Trinamool Congress MLA from Islampur, Kanialal Agarwala, has accused the police of shooting live bullets. “Blood was flowing from Rajesh’s back. We cannot believe it was caused by a rubber bullet,” Agarwala reportedly said.
The incident resulted in a political uproar, with all the opposition parties coming down heavily on the State government. Senior Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader Sujan Chakraborty, who leads the Left Legislature Party in the State Assembly, told Frontline : “Today in Bengal the police have lost their neutrality and are nothing more than an extension of the Trinamool family. What happened once again reinforced the attitude of the State government that its word is final and it will not tolerate any dissent.” The Students’ Federation of India, the student wing of the CPI(M), called for a 12-hour strike on September 22. Manoj Chakraborty, chief whip of the Congress Legislature Party, also wanted a CBI probe. “The matter should be made clear to the general public. They have a right to know what happened,” he said. The BJP called a 12-hour bandh in Islampur on September 21, the day after the shooting, and a 12-hour State-wide shutdown on September 26.
The matter soon degenerated into a political slanging match, with the Trinamool alleging that the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh was behind the violence and the BJP demanding a CBI probe and State Education Minister Partha Chatterjee’s resignation. The bandh on September 26 became the stage for a standoff between the ruling Trinamool, determined to foil the bandh, and the BJP, determined to prove that it was not just a token opposition but a political force to reckon with. There were clashes between Trinamool and BJP supporters throughout the state; public buses were burnt by BJP workers, train services were disrupted, and even school buses carrying children were attacked. A trader from Pashchim Medinipur district was killed by alleged BJP goons when he insisted on keeping his shop open despite the threats issued by miscreants in the area.
Although the State government had deployed its entire machinery to ensure normalcy and issued a notification making it compulsory for its employees to attend work, it could not completely neutralise the impact of the bandh. While Mamata Banerjee called it a “flop show” and congratulated the people of the State on not allowing it to be a success, State BJP chief Dilip Ghosh called it a huge success. “People have willingly participated and supported it as it was called for a genuine reason,” he said.
The shooting has also thrown up certain key questions. Besides the issue of using unwarranted force to quell a school agitation, serious lapses in the education system have come to the surface. Shortage of teachers is nothing new at Daribhit High School. A former student said: “I remember barely three out of seven periods in a day were utilised for teaching. Most of the time, there would not even be roll calls of students.”
Sujan Chakraborty said: “Daribhit is not a one-off case. There are many such schools all over the State. The root cause of what happened in Islampur has to be addressed and the entire education system has to be overhauled. That is our main concern now.”
COMMents
COMMents
SHARE