Adhikari says police have free hand to act against rapists

Kolkata: A man accused of raping and murdering a 12-year-old girl was killed in a police encounter in West Bengal’s Uttar Dinajpur district on Monday, with Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari defending the firing as an act of self-defence and asserting that his government had given the police a free hand to deal with rapists.

The killing of Dilip Roy in Raiganj, the fourth reported encounter death since the BJP came to power in May, triggered a political controversy, with the opposition TMC questioning the government’s law-and-order record and alleging that crimes against women and children continued unabated despite the Chief Minister’s tough talk.

Defending the police action, Adhikari, who also holds the Home department portfolio, asked whether police personnel were expected to “keep their firearms in their pockets or throw rasgullas when criminals opened fire at them”, and asserted that they were entitled to retaliate in self-defence.

Police said Roy opened fire at a team that had tracked him down near the Bengal-Bihar border following a four-day search. The personnel retaliated, injuring him.

He was taken to Raiganj Medical College and Hospital, where doctors declared him dead.

A senior police officer said the team received a tip-off around 2 am and traced Roy to Parapukur in the Gouri gram panchayat area. A bullet allegedly fired by him hit the tyre of a police vehicle. Roy, whose ancestral home was in Jharkhand, was reportedly attempting to flee towards Bihar.

The case had sparked outrage after the naked and partially decomposed body of the 12-year-old girl was recovered from a forest near the Kulik river on November 6. She had gone missing three days earlier after leaving home on a bicycle.

Police alleged that Roy had taken the girl to the forest on the pretext of showing her the river, raped her and subsequently killed her, an officer said.

Earlier, a police officer had told PTI that the victim was a niece of the accused, but another senior official later said they were neighbours and not related to each other.

“The accused and the victim were neighbours. They were known to each other,” the senior police officer later said.

Adhikari sought to frame the incident as an instance of police responding to an armed attack rather than an indiscriminate use of force.

Addressing reporters in Digha in Purba Medinipur district, the Chief Minister said police personnel were authorised to retaliate when attacked and did not need to wait for permission from senior officers in certain cases involving rape and murder, drug trafficking and infiltration from Bangladesh.

“Do the police shoot every accused? When someone attacks police, they retaliate in self-defence. Is the police supposed to keep its gun in its pocket? Will the police throw rasgullas if they are fired upon by criminals?” he said.

“The government has given the police a free hand in certain cases. They need not wait for permission from their superiors to act. There is absolutely zero tolerance towards rape and murder, drug trafficking and infiltration,” Adhikari said.

Union Minister Sukanta Majumdar backed the Chief Minister, saying the government would not tolerate sexual offences and that criminals would be dealt with in accordance with the law.

“If a criminal shoots at the police, will the police throw laddoos at him? They too will open fire,” he said.

The opposition, however, sought to turn the latest encounter into a question of accountability, arguing that police action against accused persons could not substitute for ensuring the safety of women and children.

TMC national general secretary and MP Abhishek Banerjee, in a post on X, questioned the BJP government’s emphasis on encounters while alleging that sexual offences and violent crimes continued unabated.

“Encounter after encounter, yet rapes continue unabated. This is the grim reality of the BJP’s much-advertised Jungle Raj model,” he said.

Banerjee also referred to the alleged abduction and rape of an eight-year-old girl in Bhatar in Purba Bardhaman district on Monday, citing reported figures of more than 2,500 rapes, over 600 murders and more than 34,000 grave offences in recent months.

These figures were cited by the TMC leader and could not be independently verified by PTI.

In a striking reaction to his death, Roy’s mother refused to take his body home and said she did not wish to see his face, describing his death as a relief after years of alleged neglect and abuse.

“What can I say? Whatever has happened is good. The police have given him the punishment he deserved. I feel a burden has been lifted off my chest,” she told reporters at the hospital where his body had been taken.

The BJP government has sought to project its approach as a decisive break from the previous Left Front and TMC regimes, which it accuses of allowing criminal networks to flourish under political patronage.

The latest encounter is the fourth reported fatal police firing incident since May.

In July, Prabhas Mondal, accused of raping and murdering an 11-year-old girl in Baruipur in South 24 Parganas, was killed after police alleged that he snatched a firearm from personnel during a crime-scene reconstruction exercise and opened fire.

On October 27, two other accused persons were killed in separate incidents. Prahlad Das, arrested after the recovery of a Class 11 student’s body in Gaighata in North 24 Parganas, was allegedly shot while attempting to escape during crime-scene reconstruction. On the same day, Samaul Haque, arrested in connection with the murder of a BJP worker in Samserganj in Murshidabad, was also killed in a police encounter.