“We are scared to go home and have been staying with relatives (in Purba Bardhaman district) for now. I hear they have taken control of our four bighas. My father is in the hospital and we are out of our house — all because we didn’t attend the sabha,” he says.
It was at one such salishi sabha that a couple in Chopra district were flogged over their extra-marital relationship, allegedly by Tajimul Islam, a functionary of the ruling Trinamool Congress. As the incident triggered widespread outrage, police lodged a suo moto case against Tajimul, and arrested him and 11 others.
Across rural Bengal, salishi sabhas such as these are a way to dispense quick justice. Usually helmed by party functionaries, these sabhas are known to sit in judgement over everything — from relationships to land disputes, handing out verdicts and, in many cases, extreme punishments to force settlements.
Back at the bus stand, Boshir says he had to pay a price for ignoring summons to the sabha. “My wife and I have been fighting in court for five years now. When TMC workers told me that local leader Sheikh Ajad Rahman had called us for a sabha at the party office on June 14, I turned them away saying that a court was hearing our case. At this, they said I would be fined Rs 10 lakh for my absence. I skipped the sabha anyway,” he says, clutching court papers and hospital records of his father Sheikh Barkat Ali, 56, who had to be admitted to the Burdwan Medical College Hospital after the June 14 attack on them.
The police have filed a case and sent notices to the main accused, Rahman. Twelve other accused were granted bail after they surrendered in court.
Purba Bardhaman Superintendent of Police Aman Deep told The Indian Express, “An FIR has been filed in this particular case. We have zero tolerance towards such incidents.”
Speaking to The Indian Express, Rahman denied ever calling a sabha. “This is a baseless allegation. I was not there. I have no knowledge of what happened.”
About 15 km away, in Kulut village in the same district, panchayat samiti member and local TMC leader Ataur Rahman Sheikh says sabha verdicts are never forced on villagers. “We hold 10-12 sabhas annually to settle family and marriage disputes. Villagers prefer sabhas because court cases are costly and time-consuming. Our village committee comprises elders and the local imam. If the parties are unhappy with the verdict, they are free to go to court,” he says.
However, those at the receiving end of this justice system disagree.
On January 21, 2014, a tribal woman, 20, was gangraped, allegedly on orders of a kangaroo court, in Birbhum over her affair with a man. The ‘extreme punishment’ was resorted to after her family allegedly failed to pay the fine of Rs 50,000 ordered by the kangaroo court earlier. In September that year, 13 people were given a 20-year term in the case.
While they agree that the sabhas have earned notoriety for their rulings, old-timers and political leaders say this wasn’t always the case. With political might and muscle making its way into people’s lives — first during the CPI(M)’s 34-year rule and then as the Trinamool took over — the sabhas began to be controlled by local party strongmen, who often took it upon themselves to hand out punishments.
BJP MP Samik Bhattacharya says, “Salishi sabhas are proof of how lawless West Bengal is under TMC rule.”
TMC leader and Finance Minister Chandrima Bhattacharya, however, blamed the CPI(M) for the “high-handed ways” of these sabhas. Refuting this charge, CPI(M) state secretary Mohammed Selim says, “What we started was the panchayat system in West Bengal. The salishi sabhas we are hearing about now are not sabhas but rulings by TMC gangsters.”
Sanchita Sanyal, Associate Professor, political science, Kolkata University’s Asutosh College, says such sabhas are a “sign of the failure of the policing and judicial systems”. “(In the Chopra’s incident) Hundreds watched the victims get flogged but did not protest because they see such forms of justice dispensation as part of the society’s system,” she says.
Defending the sabhas, TMC leader Jalauddin Khan, the saha-sabhapati of Khejuri-1 panchayat samiti in Purba Medinipur district, says, “While I condemn the Chopra incident, poor villagers who are harassed in police stations and courts prefer to approach the sabhas.”
Former IPS officer Adhir Sharma says salishi sabhas became a tradition during Communist rule because they thought “the criminal justice system was expensive for the poor”. These days, however, he says, these sabhas are in the news because booth-level workers of ruling parties who manage the voting machinery were given “a free hand”.
Amid all the finger-pointing, those punished by these extra-judicial courts are left with painful memories.
Sitting in her home in a Paschim Midnapore district village, Reena Mondol, a zari artisan, 40, says her teenage daughter died by suicide after one such sabha in March 2022. She says her 17-year-old felt “humiliated” after a sabha made her apologise publicly to her aunt in a family matter. “My daughter had a school friend (a boy) over while I was away, so her aunt started questioning her character and even slapped me during a scuffle,” she says.
That evening, she says, local TMC leaders called a sabha. “They wanted my daughter to touch her aunt’s feet as an apology. When she refused, they forced her to do it anyway. She disappeared some time during the sabha, which ended around 9 pm. We found her hanging the next morning,” Reena adds.
The aunt, arrested for abetting suicide, is currently out on bail. “Last year, I voluntarily wrote a letter stating that I held no one responsible for my daughter’s death. I have two other daughters to take care of,” she says.
Tapan Patra, the local TMC booth president from the village, says, “The aunt had approached us for a solution… It is unfortunate that the girl took it (our solution) to heart.”
Around 10 km away from Kolkata, in North 24 Parganas’s Kalikapur village, Kamal Hossain, 35, talks about his March ordeal.
“Though a Barasat court is hearing a land dispute between my family and my uncle, the panchayat asked us to attend a salishi sabha. Late on March 14, my father and I went to the panchayat office to inform them that a sabha was not required since the matter was in court. They ended up assaulting my father,” says Kamal.
His father Haji Mostafa Molla, 65, says deputy pradhan Tutun Gaji “hit me with a paperweight on my head and face”. An FIR has been filed against Gaji, but the father-son claim the police are yet to take action.
When contacted, Gaji told The Indian Express, “Mostafa’s younger brother approached us for a settlement, but Haji saheb started arguing with us. We have decided not to hold any sabhas since he lodged a complaint against us.”