Showing solidarity with his force, Kolkata Police (KP) commissioner Manoj Verma on Friday claimed that it was the teachers who attacked cops first during the vandalism at the district inspector (DI) of schools office at Kasba on Wednesday.
While speaking to reporters today the city police chief also claimed saying, “Police were attacked by the teachers. Can’t police take action when they are attacked? We can’t even expect that teachers could also beat up cops.”
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Jobless teachers and non-teaching staff of government-aided schools were kicked, punched and hit with batons by police in front of the DI office at Kasba when they were agitating there demanding release of mirror image of OMR sheets of recruitment tests conducted by the West Bengal School Service Commission (WBSSC) in 2016.
Ritan Das, sub-inspector (SI) of Kasba PS, in uniform was seen kicking one agitating teacher Amit Ranjan Bhuniya of a secondary school in South 24-Parganas, during the protest programme.
The incident rocked the state prompting people’s outrage to protest against the police atrocities.
“Security arrangements were taken considering the programme of the teachers. But we can’t expect that the teachers would be violent and attack the police. They had a plan to lock the DI office but it’s not the same thing to lock the office or to break the lock. Do you (reporters) think teachers can create vandalism? Nobody can think that they would create violence,” Mr Verma said.
“Outsiders were there with the teachers at the spot. We alerted cops soon after we came to know about the presence of the outsiders,” said joint commissioner of police in charge of crime, Rupesh Kumar, sitting beside Mr Verma. He said that cops had handled the situation with restraint even after the agitators broke the guardrails installed in front of the DI office to enter the premises.
“What I said earlier, I’m repeating today that it was not desirable to kick someone. Police may make mistakes but there should not be a repeat of the same act,” he said while reacting to the act of the on-duty Ritan Das of Kasba police station.
“The SI was assaulted and he sustained injury on his chest. His spectacle was damaged,” Mr Verma said.
Showing video clips of the incident Mr Kumar said that they broke the barricade around 12.18 p.m. first and then locked the gate. After that they harassed police around 12.30 p.m. but police didn’t take action till then. Thirteen policemen were injured by the agitators, he claimed.