Mob Rule

The shocking events in Malda, West Bengal, where seven judicial officers were held hostage for hours during a Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise while being denied basic amenities, are the logical outcome of a political ecosystem nurtured under the state’s mercurial Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.

The officers, acting under court orders were gheraoed, deprived of food and water, and released only after a late-night rescue involving central forces. The Supreme Court of India called it a “complete breakdown of law and order” and an “abdication of duty” by the West Bengal government. Even more damning was the court’s observation that the episode was a targeted attempt to intimidate officers executing a judicial mandate.

But the Malda case is hardly an aberration. Going by events in recent years, it would seem that there exists no line between state authority and street coercion in West Bengal as rule under the TMC regime has steadily eroded institutional authority while empowering partisan impunity.

In the infamous 2024 Sandeshkhali case, enforcement officials were attacked, media personnel assaulted and a TMC strongman form the minority community remained at large for weeks after allegations ranging from corruption to sexual violence surfaced.

The chilling episode at the R. G. Kar Medical College and Hospital concerning the rape and murder of a trainee doctor in 2024 had triggered nationwide outrage owing to the brutality of the crime as well as what followed. Allegations emerged of delayed FIRs, tampered evidence and institutional complicity. The arrest of senior officials linked to the hospital only reinforced the perception that accountability under Banerjee’s TMC government was an afterthought, not a priority.

Some romantic defenders of the Mamata regime will argue that West Bengal has always had a turbulent political culture. Nothing could be more irrelevant, reductive and nonsensical. The purpose of governance is not to inherit chaos, but to contain it. After more than a decade in power, the Trinamool Congress can no longer plead the chaotic legacy of the erstwhile Communist regime. It not only owns the present but is responsible for amplifying the damage done by the previous regime.

Banerjee has built her political persona on resistance against the Narendra Modi-led-BJP government at the Centre. Pandering to her minority votebank, she has long cast aspersions on the SIR, repeatedly questioning its legitimacy and amplifying fears of exclusion with the sole objective of keeping her vote base intact. Publicly, her position is framed as a defence of vulnerable voters against arbitrary disenfranchisement. Politically, it has consolidated a core support base that has become central to the TMC’s electoral survival in the coming Assembly contest.

If Sandeshkhali showed how authority can be captured, R. G. Kar revealed how it can be compromised. Malda demonstrates how it can be openly defied.

In such a system, the question is no longer whether law and order has broken down. It is whether it still exists in any meaningful sense.