In yet another judicial slap to the face of the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress (TMC) government, the West Bengal High Court-appointed Special Investigation Team (SIT) has exposed what many in the state have long known but few dared to say out loud: the state machinery is not just incompetent but complicit. The SIT’s latest report confirms the active involvement of a local TMC councillor and the complete inaction of the police during the April 11 communal violence in Dhulian, Murshidabad—violence that flared amidst protests over the controversial Waqf (Amendment) Bill. The findings are damning. According to the three-member SIT comprising senior legal and human rights officials, the local police were “inactive and absent” while mobs looted and vandalised a garment mall and attacked Hindu homes. This wasn’t a case of late response—it was total abandonment. The “main attack” took place in broad daylight, yet the state’s law enforcement disappeared without explanation. One must ask: was this incompetence or complicity? In Mamata’s Bengal, the line blurs far too often. Let’s not pretend this is an isolated event. From Sandeshkhali to Dhulian, from Basirhat to Bhatpara, a pattern is emerging—one where the state retreats when certain groups riot and only awakens when Hindu retaliation becomes a possibility. The judiciary seems increasingly frustrated. The same High Court division bench observed that the only remedy to the state’s failure is the deployment of independent valuation experts to assess damages and prepare customised rehabilitation packages for the victims. Translation: the state can’t be trusted even to count the damage it allowed to happen.
More disturbingly, the SIT report isn’t alone. The state government’s submission to the court admitted that between April 8 and April 12, multiple areas in Murshidabad—Suti, Dhulian, Samserganj, and Jangipur—witnessed organised mob violence. Despite this, the administration claimed the situation was “under control,” a lie the court didn’t buy. This brings us to a larger, more sinister truth. Mamata Banerjee’s governance model relies on selective policing, vote-bank appeasement, and administrative cowardice. Whether it was the Sandeshkhali outrage, the horrific gangrape of a junior doctor in a TMC-ruled hospital, or the whispered horror of Rohingya infiltrators being quietly “rehabilitated” and even allegedly inducted into administrative roles, the TMC regime has shown a dangerous willingness to compromise state security for short-term electoral gains. Why is the Chief Minister never held accountable? Why is no one asking how and why illegal migrants—often radicalised, often undocumented—were allowed to alter the demographic fabric of sensitive districts like Murshidabad and North 24 Parganas? Mamata Banerjee’s silence is not neutrality. It is approval through omission. Her government’s refusal to act has repeatedly emboldened lawbreakers while scaring law-abiding Hindus into silence or exodus. The state’s trajectory under Mamata is not simply one of administrative failure—it is one of demographic manipulation, institutional subversion, and deliberate ethnic intimidation. If there is political will to set this right, then let us call a spade a spade. Let us call out the TMC regime not just for being weak, but for being wilfully dangerous. It is no longer enough to cite “intelligence failures” or “local lapses” when the rot goes all the way to the top. It is time Mamata Banerjee is held morally and politically accountable. Her resignation would be the bare minimum. But in a state where mobs roam free and police vanish into thin air; accountability has long been sacrificed on the altar of communal arithmetic.
