Even as social media expressed anguish and anger against the arrest and detention of the minor boy whose Facebook post sparked off serious communal unrest in Basirhat town of North 24 Parganas district from July 4, the Hindu Samhati, a grassroots human rights body that provides succour to West Bengal’s beleaguered Hindu community during every incident of rape, molestation, land grab or temple desecration, has stepped in to challenge the arrest. The organisation is particularly unhappy at the manner in which the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act has been deliberately ignored in this case, when it has evidence that the boy is only 16 years old (he turned 17 on Jul 18th).
Most Indians were outraged at the duplicity with which the mainstream media collaborated in concealing the name and identity of the minor rapist-assailant in the sensational Delhi gang rape of December 2012. The convict was released after merely three months in jail and relocated and rehabilitated in another part of the country through the aegis of an NGO. The public outrage forced the government to amend the law to provide that anybody committing a heinous crime would be tried as an adult.
The 16-year-old from Rudrapur village in Baduria in Basirhat, however, had merely posted a comment or sketch repeating some ahistorical imaginations about the Kaaba, which were quickly deleted when they came to the notice of the authorities. Despite this, the youth – a student of class XI – was quickly arrested on the night of July 2, ostensibly for his own safety. A mob burnt down his house the same day, and the rioting built up thereafter.
In the midst of this high tension, some wise persons thought it fit to release the name of the minor; some photographs also did the rounds of social media. This enraged right minded citizens who countered by revealing the name of the now-adult convicted rapist, along with his alleged photograph (the veracity of which could not be ascertained).
Had safety been the primary concern of the authorities, the boy and his family should have been moved to a safe place. Instead the police produced him before a magistrate who sent him to judicial custody. Surely the magistrate knew this was not the legal process when dealing with a minor?
Nor did West Bengal Police enhance security in the area, which was soon engulfed in fierce rioting by irate mobs that set fire to everything that came their way. They had clearly been deployed to wreak mayhem on the town. It took a couple of days, including an intervention from Governor Kesrinath Tripathi, to bring the situation under control. Before that, however, an agitated Chief Minister accused the Governor of interfering in the administration and further accused Hindu Samhati chief, Tapan Ghosh, of fanning the unrest.
It has been alleged that a crackdown on illegal cattle smuggling to Bangladesh, just a few miles across a fairly porous border, was the real reason for the rage of the rampaging mobs. This lucrative trade fetches Rs 4000 crore per annum, half of which goes into the pockets of the North 24 Parganas traders; the rest goes to Malda-Murshidabad traders. This situation is reminiscent of the so-called farmer’s agitation in Mandsaur, Madhya Pradesh, where opium farmers who wanted to sell more of their lucrative produce to private buyers (read drug mafia) fuelled the violence there early this month.
It goes without saying that Delhi’s Page Three activists kept the minor boy and the Basirhat victims at arm’s length. It was left to the volunteers of the Hindu Samhati to look out for the family of daily-wage labourers.
Moving systematically, Hindu Samhati volunteers scoured the burnt remains of the house for days. Their tenacity was rewarded when they finally found his birth certificate which clearly states that he was born on 6 July 2000. This proves he was (and is) only 16 years old at the time of arrest. Tapan Ghosh subsequently tweeted that he had legal evidence that the boy was a minor. The birth certificate has been issued by Baduria Municipality.
Hindu Samhati found the document on July 12. At the urging of the boy’s uncle, it filed complaints with Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and the West Bengal Commission for Protection of Child Rights, on July 12 itself, regarding the violation of child rights by the West Bengal police. In a pleasant surprise, the Chief Minister office acknowledged the complaint and even issued a receipt for the same.
There is considerable apprehension among the battered Hindu community of the area that since the first information report (FIR) filed by the police does not mention the boy’s date of birth, the administration may attempt to have him tried as an adult, in in gross violation of the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act.
It is learnt that the police would be producing the child in court on July 20. Hindu Samhati plans to have its lawyers present to argue that juvenile law needs to be applied in this case, failing which the organisation will appeal to the High Court.
Pgurus, 19 July 2017
https://www.pgurus.com/baduria-minor-arrest-challenged/
[Fig 1. Birth Certificate of the Baduria Minor
Fig 2. FIR of the Baduria Minor]