May 11, 2015: On the dereliction of duty by the police

When Avijit Roy was murdered, the police were standing nearby and watching the spectacle. Afterwards, the murderers left unscathed. Later, the police claimed there had apparently been no dereliction of duty. One would love to know what their duty was.

The police were also close-at-hand when the murderers escaped after killing Oyasiqur Rahman Babu. Unfortunately for the police, this time they could not say that they had not abandoned their responsibilities. It was a person of the third gender, named Labanya, who actually captured the murderers, who then were sent to jail.

When women were being molested one-by-one before an audience of thousands at the New Year celebrations, the police were paper tigers. They were engaged primarily not in neglecting their duty, but in clearing the way for the sexual offenders to escape. So when Lyton Nandi and several others nabbed some of the sexual terrorists and handed them over to the police, the police released them shortly after.

When there was uproar in the media about this, the police categorically denied any such incident. No one had lodged a complaint with them. When the molesters were spotted on CCTV footage, the police fell silent. The old tune was repeated. No one had lodged a complaint with them. The police continued to be inactive even after several of the sexual terrorists were identified. There’s no dereliction of duty.

When a number of leftist organisations, including students’ unions, submitted a memorandum of protest to the police, demanding to know why the offenders were not being arrested, why not even attempts to pursue the issue were being made, the police pounced on them, injuring university students with the butts of their guns and their boots. Here too I was told that the police had not abandoned their responsibility. But I’m very keen to know what the real responsibility of the police is.