Narada sting: Mamata Banerjee, Rajeev Kumar and a Salvador Dali-esque probe order

Mamata Banerjee is not a woman to be trifled with. Her remarkable political career, in which as a woman leader she broke many glass ceilings, has been marked by feistiness, fearless pluck and a confrontational attitude. It has served her well.

She was able to overthrow a three-decade old government in the state largely because unlike her colleagues in the Congress party who were too entrenched with the ruling CPM to oppose them politically, she refused to make compromises.

She understood that staying within the Congress would finish her off as a leader. So she came out, floated her own party in 1997 and 14 years later in a watershed moment in Bengal politics, single-handedly trounced the Left Front which had an air of invincibility about it after 34 years of uninterrupted power.

If the enormity of the achievement in 2011 lent Mamata a huge amount of self confidence, the landslide win in 2016 Assembly polls — faced with a hostile local media and many charges of corruption from opposition — seems to have given her the belief that she and her party were unfairly targeted and that she must ‘fix’ those who tried to do her harm.

As a political leader, Mamata doesn’t take lightly to criticism and what she perceives as political vendetta. And as an administrator, she has a ruthless, authoritarian streak. Both traits of her personality became evident by the way she ordered a police probe into the infamous Narada videos which stung 13 of her party members including senior leaders, MPs, state Cabinet ministers and caused her massive embarrassment in the run up to the Assembly elections.

The surreal order

There was almost a Salvador Dali-esque quality in the chief minister’s statement as she ordered that Kolkata’s top cop, the controversial Rajeev Kumar, will head a “comprehensive inquiry” into the Narada News sting operation in which several TMC leaders were purportedly shown accepting wads of cash from a journalist posing as a representative of a fictitious company.

“Today I gave a note to the chief secretary (Basudeb Banerjee) to start a probe on the entire episode. We also discussed the matter threadbare. A controversy was stirred up by conducting the so-called sting. It was a provocation and conspiracy to create a hostile public reaction.

“We want the truth to come out. We want to know who all were behind the sting. I have seen on a number of occasions attempts were made to defame Bengal. We don’t want that”, a News18 report quoted her as saying.

Consider the paradox. The Chief Minister, who as home minister is also in charge of the police, already believes that a conspiracy via a so-called sting was hatched to malign her party’s image just before the polls and create suspicion among the voters.

And yet she claims that : “We are transparent and those behind it should be exposed. The police will conduct an impartial probe and the guilty will be punished.” She also added that police will find out those behind the “conspiracy”.

Incidentally, Firhad Hakim, Subrata Mukherjee, Sovon Chatterjee and Suvendu Adhikari, who also figured in the footage, have since become ministers in the present government.

So to sum up the order, the police have been asked to launch an “impartial” inquiry into a scam in which lies implicated several ministers of the state cabinet of which Mamata Banerjee is the chief.

It is hard to shake off the belief that Mamata’s move is aimed less at finding out the veracity of the footage and more at figuring out who may have planned the entire operation.

Not unexpectedly, the opposition termed Mamata’s decision “a gimmick” to fool the masses and “cover up the important evidences” in the sting operation.

“This is nothing but a gimmick to fool the people. Everybody knows what the result was when SIT was formed on Sarada scam. Important documents where siphoned off and no major arrests were made. It was a CBI investigation that led to the arrest of several important leaders of TMC,” leader of opposition and senior Congress leader Abdul Mannan was quoted, as saying by PTI .

“This investigation into the Narada scam is also ordered for the same purpose of covering up the incident,” Mannan said.

BJP national secretary Rahul Sinha said if the CM really wanted a proper inquiry, she should have recommended a CBI probe. “If she really wanted proper inquiry she should have called for a CBI inquiry,” Sinha said.

The curious case of the top cop

Rajeev Kumar, Kolkata’s top cop who has been charged with the inquiry, was removed from his post as police commissioner by the Election Commission. He was accused by all opposition parties of playing a partisan role in the run up to the Assembly polls and of ordering two policemen from the detective wing of the Kolkata Police to approach BJP national secretary Rahul Sinha with a bribe. Kumar, however, denied the allegation. The EC ordered his removal after reportedly finding merit in the allegation .

Soumen Mitra, who took his place, earned all-round praise for his impartial conduct during the polls. However, within two days of getting re-elected into power, the Chief Minister reinstated Kumar as the Kolkata Police commissioner and ‘banished’ Mitra to the post of ADG (Training), West Bengal Police.

Kumar, the 1989 batch IPS officer is considered close to the Chief Minister. It is alleged that as the Bidhannagar Commissioner, he stonewalled the probe into the multi-crore Sarada chit fund scam.

Mannan referred to Kumar’s past as Bidhanagar police commissioner that was entrusted with the task of probing the Sarada chit fund scam in 2013 before the inquiry was handed over to the CBI following a Supreme Court order.

“The person who failed to arrest even a single person despite probing the chit fund scam for two years, cannot be expected to carry out a proper probe. He has been asked to give a clean chit ”.

CPIM state secretary Surjya Kanta Mishra also criticized the Chief Minister’s move.

The accused in d Narada sting now declares to conduct an investigation and that too by its henchman cop!! Farce of d highest order!!

— Surjya Kanta Mishra (@mishra_surjya) June 17, 2016

What about the High Court probe?

There is another aspect to the case. A two judge bench of Calcutta High Court comprising Chief Justice Manjula Chellur and Justice A Banerjee ordered the setting up of a three member panel to secure the tapes and other material from Mathew Samuel, Narada News editor.

Samuel submitted the original footage and the device used to record it to the panel consisting of Jayanta Koley, Registrar, Calcutta High Court, Anil Kumar, IGP and member secretary of West Bengal Police recruitment board and Nagendra Prasad, SP, CBI, ACB, Calcutta, at Banga Bhawan in New Delhi on 18 April, 2016 .

As former Supreme Court judge Ashok Kumar Ganguly has pointed out, with the Calcutta High Court conducting a probe, it was “not proper” to hold a parallel inquiry.

But it won’t deter Mamata from charting own path. For better or worse, she is absolutely convinced of her course of action.