A weekend full of wanton violence and destruction in various pockets of Howrah, ostensibly to protest the controversial remarks about the Prophet by BJP leaders Nupur Sharma and Naveen Jindal, is bound to leave indelible scars on those at the receiving end.
“A mob of more than thousand appeared from almost nowhere on Friday afternoon. They were armed and raised religious slogans. Even before we could respond, they attacked our party office and destroyed it completely. Our frantic phone calls to the local Uluberia PS, which is barely 2 kilometres away, fell on deaf ears. All we could do then was to run for our lives,” said Arunodoy Pal Chowdhury, BJP’s Howrah-Rural district president.
Except, may be, for the facade, nothing remains of the BJP’s two-storey Howrah-Rural party headquarters in the Mansatala area of Uluberia adjacent to NH-6 where the said mob allegedly went on an unobstructed rampage for over an hour-and-a-half soon after Friday’s prayers.
Heavy chunks of sandstones, not naturally found in the area, lay on the floor of the thoroughly vandalised first floor of the building as evidence of how prepared the attackers were when they targeted the party office.
The IT office, along with all its equipment, was ransacked while some areas of the office were torched. About 14 two-wheelers owned by party workers were doused in petrol and set on fire while two four-wheelers belonging to the party’s district president and secretary were vandalised beyond repair. The vehicles were parked at the office at the time of the attack.
It beats all reason why a local sports club would be targeted in a manner similar to a political party office. Some 5 kilometres away, in Panchla, the Netaji Sangha Club — which stands next to the highway — was also vandalised in exactly the same manner at about the same time on Friday.
Shattered glasses on the floor, broken chairs, tables, almirahs and smashed trophies won by the club in various sporting tournaments bear testimony to the mindless violence. Even portraits of leaders of yesteryears haven’t been spared. A ripped-to-pieces picture of Netaji Subhas Bose hung precariously from one of the walls on the ground floor.
A makeshift shack belonging to a local fruit seller in front of the building was set on fire and destroyed completely.
“Some of our club members are very active in the area and we don’t allow corrupt and illegal practices in this region. That’s perhaps why we were a target for a long time. This issue gave them the perfect opportunity to do what they always have been wanting to do with this club,” a member said, requesting anonymity.
The adjoining Panchla Bazar area, which otherwise bustles with activity on a Sunday afternoon, wore the look of a ghost town.
Every shop and establishment in the area was found with downed shutters and the streets were completely deserted. Besides the policemen patrolling the streets, no sign of active public life was visible.
A few peeping faces with fear writ large on them from windows of upper floors of houses behind shattered glass panes could hardly qualify as signs of a vibrant commercial hub, which the area otherwise is.
It seems Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s folded-hand appeal to protesters who blocked NH-6 and its adjacent railway tracks in the Kharagpur-Howrah division for obscenely long hours late last week, prompting large-scale harassment to commuters (even a death inside the Secuderabad–Shalimar Express which remained stuck on the tracks) only emboldened them to escalate violence to the next level of rioting.
“Situation is peaceful now, forces have been deployed and we have received no fresh inputs of violence in the last 36 hours. There are some areas when some added precautions are being taken and we are conducting raids in search of the offenders. So far we have arrested more than 50 persons,” Praveen Tripathi, the newly appointed Police Commissioner of Howrah, told News 18 while crisscrossing the areas in the district falling under his purview to oversee law and order.
Swati Bangalia, the newly appointed SP-Rural Howrah, admitted that there were some gaps in police’s response time to SOS calls sent out by victims during the violence but pinned it on the vastness of the area coupled with limited forces in the initial stages.
“Initially our forces were scattered and there was violence happening simultaneously at several places. We tried to contain most of them. There were some we couldn’t. But we have taken prompt action immediately afterwards and reinforced our presence in the vulnerable areas. We have identified those who provoked people into doing this and are in the process of arresting them,” Bangalia told News18.
“I would like to reassure the people in this area that there would be no further escalation of violence or even a repeat and the perpetrators would be brought to justice,” she added.
But for a region which is no stranger to such acts of mindless violence, anything besides long-term measures in policing and, of course, revamped politicking are bound to end up as short-term solutions to a deep-rooted malaise.
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