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Contrast shows personal liberty is enslaved by masters of FIR

PRONAB MONDAL

Calcutta, April 15: Nothing illustrates the threat that the FIR raj poses to personal liberty more starkly than the arbitrary manner in which two complaints in the cartoon case were pursued. One complaint was filed against Jadavpur University professor Ambikesh Mahapatra by a Trinamul supporter, accusing him of emailing "obscene" content about the chief minister. The second was lodged by Mahapatra, accusing four persons with Trinamul links of assaulting him. The strikingly divergent police response to the two cases shows how the choice of a ledger can decide whether you will spend the night in a lock-up or at home. If the police choose a fat book called the general diary, the chances of harassment are low. However, if the officer reaches out for a thinner register in which first information reports (FIRs) are recorded, your liberty can depend on the whim and mercy of the officer or his political boss. A general diary is usually recorded in a fat book with blank pages. An FIR is lodged in a separate book with a specific format and space marked out for complaint, name of victim and charges. Unlike a general diary book where several complaints are lodged on a page, an FIR book has one page for each complaint. The page number is considered the FIR number. As there is one numbered page for every complaint, an FIR is difficult to tamper with. Mahapatra's experience shows vividly how the fate of a citizen can swing like a pendulum between the two books. (See graphic) The police had treated the complaint lodged by the assaulted professor as a general diary barely 24 hours after displaying ingenuity in charging him with a congnisable offence and putting him behind bars for the night. On the intervening night of Thursday and Friday, when a man who identified himself as a Trinamul local committee member filed a complaint against the professor, the police immediately treated it as an FIR. The alacrity was unusual because the police are normally keen to register complaints in the general diary — a mere police record on the basis of which a probe need not be started. But an FIR is a big brother that cannot be trifled with and is used to immediate attention. This is the reason the general diary registers in police stations are more often than not thicker than the FIR ledgers. Besides, an FIR is registered only when a cognisable offence is mentioned. As a defamation charge could not be held cognisable when lodged by a person whose own reputation was not at stake, the police slapped charges under the stringent Information Technology Act against the Jadavpur University professor. The haste with which Mahapatra was formally arrested — less than three hours after the receipt of the complaint — has not escaped the attention of seasoned officers and veterans. Sources in the police confirmed that even elementary investigation was not carried out to check the veracity of the complaint before the professor was arrested. "The police booked him under the Information Technology (IT) Act. An investigation is mandatory before arresting anyone under the IT Act and, for this, seizure of the computer, which was allegedly used to send the emails, is mandatory," an officer said. The police have not seized the computer yet, over 72 hours after the complaint. The rapid registration of the FIR against Mahapatra and his arrest could not have occurred by default. According to established routine, an officer of sub-inspector rank always informs the officer in charge of the police station before registering an FIR. If the case is tricky, the OC immediately informs his superior, a deputy commissioner of police, about the contents of the FIR. If it is a simple case, the DC gets to know of it from the incident report sent the following morning. Depending on the nature of the complaint, the DC informs his boss, in this case the special commissioner. "It seems the practice was followed for both the complaints," said an officer at Lalbazar. Police sources said the political leadership was usually informed of a sensitive case by the special commissioner. East Jadavpur is part of the south suburban division under deputy commissioner Sujoy Chanda. Chanda reports to special commissioner Sivaji Ghosh, who is known to be close to Writers' Buildings. It is not known if Ghosh kept any political leader in the picture on the events of Thursday and Friday. Sources said the same officer had initially briefed the chief minister on the Park Street rape case, which she described as "cooked up". In any case, Mahapatra should not have had to spend the night in a lock-up even after being arrested. "The police should have told him clearly that the charges against him were such that he could be granted bail at the police station itself," a lawyer said. "This is a norm mentioned in the rulebook," said Jayanta Narayan Chatterjee, a high court advocate. In contrast, Mahapatra's complaint at the same East Jadavpur police station on Friday night was treated as a general diary. Naming the four accused, Mahapatra wrote in his complaint: "I was thrashed, kicked and slapped by a group of 10-12 men and they forcibly took me to the housing's office room where others were waiting. They again beat me, used abusive language and threatened to take my life." A senior officer at the police headquarters said: "He (Mahapatra) described how he was punched, kicked and slapped before he was threatened that his life would not be spared. Police should have picked up the accused immediately for interrogation." However, on Friday night, by when Mahapatra's arrest had made news across the country, East Jadavpur police sat on his complaint and awaited instructions. "We had been asked to wait till next (Saturday) morning to lodge an FIR on the basis of Mahapatra's complaint. We had no instruction from our superiors to conduct raids on Friday night to trace the accused. We just made an entry in the GD book mentioning Mahapatra's complaint," said an officer. Not that the police swooped down on the accused once the arrest was greenlighted the next day. Amit Sardar, Arup Mukherjee, Nishikanta Ghorai and Sheikh Mustafa were asked to come over to the police station. "They agreed immediately because by then they had also received instructions," the officer said, refusing to speculate on the source of the directive to the four.