Another unique feature of the case was that strong public opinion influenced government action probably for arguably the first time in the three decades of Marxist rule in the state. Thus far the government appeared impervious to public and press criticism. Take, for instance, the brutal killing of the Kolkata police officer, Vinod Mehta and his body guard, by criminals in the Garden Reach area in 1984. The bureaucracy, including the Kolkata police commissioner, remained unscathed despite this loud criticism from all quarters. The indiscriminate police firing on Mamata Banerjee’s rally in 1993, which resulted in the death of 13 young people in the heart of Kolkata also failed to elicit a response. No heads rolled, despite the then police commissioner of Kolkata having publicly defended that brutal police action. Or, consider the Chhoto Angaria massacre in Midnapore in January 2001, in which party activists brutally gunned down nearly a dozen of their political opponents. The CBI investigating the case indicted a number of local CPM leaders although it failed to arrest them. The most dreaded of the lot continued to roam free, draw their salaries from school and attend party conferences. No remorse from killers, no punishment to them. This trend held true even after the administrative and political bungling in Nandigram, which resulted in the killing of at least 14 villagers.

Now suddenly comes the Rizwanur Rahman case, involving the broken marriage between a Hindu businessman’s daughter and a young, urban middle-class Muslim man, and the government appears rattled as never before. Perhaps Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and his party colleagues have come to realise the power of articulate, middle- class urbanites who have raised their voices in outrage against the alleged murder of Rahman. But there is also a community angle in this episode. The script is familiar: a wealthy businessman father and his associates with shady links pull strings to break off a perfectly valid marriage between two adults. In the background are top cops who are more concerned about pleasing their political bosses than addressing public grievances. Perhaps it is this communal angle that has changed the rules of the game. Bhattacharjee himself admitted, “We cannot ignore the communal aspect and the play of money power in this event.”

... contd.