SC panel chief visits West Bengal, asks Mamata Banerjee to dismiss erring cops

Shubhadeep Choudhury

Tribune News Service

Kolkata, May 14

Noting that the police failed to invoke the provisions of the Scheduled Caste Atrocities Prevention Act with regard to the incidents of atrocities against Dalits in post-poll violence, National Commission for Scheduled Castes (NCSC) chairperson Vijay Sampla has asked the Mamata Banerjee-led West Bengal Government to immediately dismiss and take legal action against police officers responsible for the lapse.

Sampla, who landed in Kolkata on Thursday on a two-day state tour, said had the police invoked the Scheduled Caste Atrocities Prevention Act, the displaced Dalit families would have received compensation and the district administration would have been under compulsion to provide them shelter and ration.

“At present, the affected families are getting nothing and miscreants are roaming about freely,” Sampla, who was talking to reporters here on Friday after visiting the affected areas, said.

He alleged that while the police in the affected areas were found to be hand in glove with miscreants, the administration was indifferent to the plight of the Dalits at the receiving end of the violence. The victims were living in constant fear, Sampla said.

The NCSC chairman, who was a Cabinet Minister in the first Modi-led government, said Dalit families had left their homes in Nabgram village in Burdwan district and Nabasan village in South 24 Pargana district.

In Bardhaman city also, houses were attacked and set afire and looted. Residents fled their houses, the NCSC chairman said.

Assessing May 2 political violence

• Vijay Sampla is among the battery of dignitaries from New Delhi who have been visiting West Bengal in the wake of the post-poll violence
• BJP chief JP Nadda and National Women Commission chairperson Rekha Sharma also visited the state recently

Report sought on displaced children

New Delhi: The National Commission for Protection of Child Rights has asked authorities in Dhubri and Kokrajhar in Assam to visit camps housing children who reportedly fled post-poll violence in West Bengal and submit a report detailing their number and atrocities faced by them. In a letter, it has asked the district magistrates to record statements of the children and file zero FIRs in cases where atrocities against them have been reported. PTI