The case file has been moving fast and the bypoll has left its mark, so the court has vacated the shield for the TMC leader. The order is a reset for the legal situation in the Falta area and may well lead to an arrest or two with no more stalling.
Why the court made a move
Justice Partha Sarathi Sen put down Khan’s request to have his protection, put in place on May 18, made to last. The court’s view was that an inquiry should be on its own merits, not the political mood of the day, and it was not going to let talk of a vendetta be an excuse for ongoing cover from the bench.
The judge was direct about it: ‘It would be unjust to give protection to the petitioner only on account of a change in the political scenario in the state and over the allegation of political vendetta levelled by him.’ On the other side, the state’s counsel made the case that this was always meant to be a limited, time-bound thing with the repoll in mind.
The state’s line is that the interim measure was to see Khan through the Falta repoll on the 21st of May, after the 29th of April had to be called off. With the results in on the 24th, there was no more reason for the legal umbrella, the counsel put forward.
Here is how the positions were laid out before the court:
– The protection was for the repoll on May 21st
– Come the 24th and the results, that need was gone
– You don’t put a political filter on an investigation
What the cases say
From the reports on the bench, Khan is looking at no fewer than seven FIRs at the Falta station. We’re talking arson, assault, criminal intimidation, even attempted murder. A good deal of these complaints have their roots in the trouble around the April 29th vote and the repoll that followed.
Now that the order is done with, the local police have a straight shot at taking coercive action, if they want to. It also takes some of the edge off for the investigators who were hamstrung by the protection up till now.
Falta’s political climate
All of this is happening in a charged-up environment in South 24 Parganas. There are roughly 225,000 voters in the Falta seat, 165,000 of them Hindu. Some of them have put on record that they were kept from voting on April 29, which is what led to the repoll.
Khan, a force in the TMC here, told lawyers he was out of the running 48 hours before the repoll. When the numbers came in on the 24th, he was nowhere to be found and his home in Falta was locked up, they say. His brother-in-law was in custody a few days prior on the strength of some of the same complaints.
In the end, the BJP’s Debangshu Panda walked away with 149,666 votes. The CPI(M) and Congress put up 40,645 and 10,084. The TMC finished a distant fourth with 7,783, and for the first time in 12 years, they are out of their deposit.
Where we go from here
The way is clear for the probe to get on with it, and the focus is back on the evidence. For Khan, the odds have just changed; with the court’s hand off the throttle, the police can do what they will with the seven FIRs.
You can expect more to happen as they look into the complaints from the 29th and the 21st. The court has made itself understood: you can’t have politics stand in for due process, and an investigation has to run its course.
