Hard on slap, soft on brutality

TT, Calcutta, Jan. 5: Two slaps have drawn a charge of attempt to murder, carrying a punishment of up to 10 years in jail.

Repeated punches, kicks and assault with objects pried loose from the dais have drawn the charge of attempt to commit culpable homicide, which entails a maximum punishment of three years in jail.

The charge of attempt to murder has been slapped on Debashis Acharya, who had slapped Mamata Banerjee's nephew Abhishek Banerjee yesterday.

The other charge has been reserved for 25-30 "unknown" people who beat Debashis to pulp. The cases have been drawn up at Chandipur police station in East Midnapore, where Abhishek had addressed the rally yesterday.

"This is nothing but a case of ludicrous judgement by the police. They can lodge an attempt to murder case against a man for slapping an MP but when the same man is beaten up mercilessly, they do not invoke the section!" said a senior IPS officer.

Senior Trinamul leader and minister Subrata Mukherjee does not agree.

"What happened to him (Debashis) pales into insignificance if considered against what he did. After Indira Gandhi was assassinated, many people were killed in retaliation. Nothing of that sort has happened here. If one of your colleagues (newspersons) were attacked, will you recite poetry? We did not go there with monks from the Ramakrishna Mission or Bharat Sevashram Sangh," Mukherjee said in response to a question.

(Several journalists have been attacked under the watch of Trinamul as well as the Left in Bengal. But no incident of journalists ganging up to attack their assailants has been reported in recent memory.)

The district police said Debashis was arrested on the charge of attempt to murder following a specific complaint lodged by Sunil Pradhan, the local Trinamul Chhatra Parishad president.

The case against "unknown" people was filed by the police on their own. The "unknown" label itself raises doubts whether anyone would be arrested at all.

Trinamul has linked Debashis with a "Right-wing party" and said he had attended a meeting of the ABVP, the student wing of the RSS.

The youth is in hospital and his family has claimed he has a mental condition, which could not be corroborated independently. Although his father had said yesterday that Debashis was an engineering student, the youth in his twenties could not name the college today.

"Considering the age of the assailant and the victim, a slap in this case can never be considered a murder attempt," said a senior IPS officer. "If it were a 45-year-old slapping a four-year-old child, it could have been different.

"Medical reports of the injured person have to be compiled and sent to a forensic analyst for opinion on whether the nature of injury could have been fatal," the officer said. "A victim may have survived miraculously because of immediate medical attention but the nature of the injury can help ascertain if it could have been fatal."

Asok Kumar Ganguly, a former Supreme Court judge who has criticised the Trinamul government in the recent past, said: "Slapping someone is a criminal offence but it ranks low in terms of severity when compared with attempted murder.... A slap does not amount to attempted murder. Beating someone up, instead of handing him over to the police present there... does.