The death of a student leader in West Bengal has put the Mamata Banerjee government in the line of fire, after his father blamed the state Civic Police Volunteer Force for the incident.
Civic police are made up of volunteers who are deployed to aid the state police. The members do not have any legal police powers like investigate, arrest or search, and merely help the state police in maintaining order and traffic control.
Anis Khan's father alleged that in the wee hours of Saturday morning, a group of civic police members reached his house at Amta in Uluberia in Howrah district. They chased him to the terrace, from where Khan was forced to jump, resulting in his death, his father Salam said.
Khan had been with the SFI in the past and was a prominent face in the anti-Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) protests at Park Circus Maidan in Kolkata in late 2019 and 2020. He later joined the Indian Secular Front.
THE WEEK is in possession of a letter that Anis had written to the police shortly after the assembly election last year. In the letter dated May 24, he had complained that local Trinamool Congress leaders held him accountable for the party not getting enough votes in his area, in the assembly polls.
“As a result, local panchyat chief and his deputy asked me not to hold a blood camp in the middle of the second Covid-19 wave. There was a increasing shortage of blood and I, along with some local people, arranged the blood camp,” Anis wrote in the letter.
“I told them that voting is the right of the local residents. Why should I get involved in it?”
Anis was asked leave his home and his house was ransacked by local TMC workers, Salam said.
“Even my physically challenged sister was harassed and badmouthed,” Anis wrote in the letter, which lawyers THE WEEK spoke to, say would be regarded as his dying statement.
Anis sent the letter to the officer-in-charge at the Amta police station instead of delivering it in person as he said he was being watched by TMC workers.
“I plead with you to give me and my family much-needed security. I am being threatened every night,” Anis wrote.
He had sent copies of the letter to Superintendent of Police, Howrah, chairman of state Human Rights Commission and the West Bengal governor.
While the police has registered a case of unnatural death, Salam has demanded a CBI investigation into the matter. He has lodged a murder complaint at the Amta police station.
Salam said he had requested the local police station to send a vehicle to take a profusely bleeding Anis to the hospital. “No car was made available. The police officer said the vehicles were busy.”
Salam said false cases were slapped against Anis for which he was chased by the civic police on Saturday.
The incident sparked violent protests in Amta. In Kolkata, ISF activists and human rights groups held demonstration on College Street. Opposition parties, too, have been holding protests and are demanding an investigation into his death by an independent agency.
Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, today, announced that a special investigation team (SIT) will be formed to probe Anis's death. Banerjee, who also holds the Home (Police) portfolio, said that the SIT will submit its report to her within 15 days. The move came after Panchayat Minister Pulak Roy was ghearoed by the mob when he went to Anis's house. The family members even refused to meet the CM at the state secretariat.
Meanwhile, DGP Manoj Malviya called Howrah SP to inquire about Anis's letter.