Calcutta HC orders CID probe against Tapas Pal

Terming Trinamool Congress MP Tapas Pal's remarks against women as "outrageous" which surpass "all bounds of civility", the Calcutta High Court ordered filing of an FIR against him and directed that the CID to investigate the matter under the court's monitoring. 

 

 

Justice Dipankar Dutta, giving his verdict on a petition seeking CID investigation into Pal's comments against women and other opposition party supporters at election rallies, also came down heavily on West Bengal police for their failure to act against the MP immediately saying it "points to the depths of lawlessness that the state has touched".

 

He said the high court would monitor the probe in view of West Bengal government's stand that the complaint did not disclose any cognisable offence and that the state tried to back the MP. 

 

Justice Dutta directed Inspector in-charge of Nakashipara police station in Nadia district to treat the July one complaint by petitioner Biplab Chowdhury, a resident of Pal's constituency Krishnagar in Nadia district, as an FIR. 

 

The judge noted that Tapas Pal had threatened women with rape and opposition party supporters with death and destruction of their lineage if they dared to take on supporters of his party and said the "speech delivered by Mr Pal is outrageous and surpasses all bounds of civility". 

 

"It seems that the constitutional ethos has had little effect on Mr Paul or else he would not have disrespected the Constitution in such vulgar manner," Justice Dutta said. 

 

"If a law-maker becomes a law-breaker and the law enforcing agency despite being informed turns a blind eye to it, can a civilised nation tolerate it? "There is a feeling of fear and insecurity in the air. 

 

Much of these crimes go unpunished because of political patronage," Justice Dutta observed. 

 

He said "the apathy and indifference of the police not to swing into action immediately points to the depths of lawlessness that the State has touched". 

 

The high court directed West Bengal DGP to transfer the case to the DIG, CID, within 72 hours of the order being uploaded in the high court's website. 

 

Justice Dutta directed the CID authorities to file a status report on progress of investigation on September one. 

 

He said "immediately after India attained independence and the erudite and eminent founding-fathers of the Constitution were engrossed in its making, they might have thought that scheming, mentally corrupt, vile, perverted, vicious and wicked people would have no room in a sacred place like the Parliament and that could be reason as to why only certain basic qualifications for membership of Parliament were provided in the Constitution, leaving it to the Parliament to prescribe other qualifications by law made in that behalf, and no provision for disqualification was incorporated." 

 

"It seems that the rich political culture of striving to uphold, maintain and advance the preambular promise for the peoples welfare and the progress for making a better India, with which one would associate the Parliament, has taken a toss," he said.

 

Justice Dutta said "a very small segment of people who, being absolutely unworthy of realizing the high and respectable positions as parliamentarians and having no sense of what morals are, by their utterly irresponsible and blameful conduct, have disgraced the entire Parliament, so much so that the people of the nation are heard to exclaim in despair that the Parliament has failed them".

 

"Howsoever sincere the responsible, dedicated and caring lot of parliamentarians may be in their efforts to promote that, for which they have been elected, a sense of ill-will towards politicians as a class seems to be developing which, if not addressed immediately, is likely to assume alarming proportions in future," he observed in the 43-page order.