DECISION TIME: Kolkata Police are telling the truth.

A statement of six words will now trigger howls of protest from a section of Calcuttans who are outraged by the brutality committed on a doctor at her workplace where she provides the healing touch to thousands.

The opposite of truth is lies. The perception among many in Calcutta, irrespective of their political affiliation and ideology, is that the Kolkata Police’s actions in the immediate aftermath of the discovery of the doctor’s body at RG Kar Medical College and Hospital on the morning of August 9 smack of suspicion, a lack of empathy, inefficiency and gross incompetence. The perception, bluntly put, is that the Kolkata Police are lying.

The slain doctor’s parents and relatives have made shocking allegations of the police “offering” them money immediately after they returned from the hospital on August 9. The police are yet to officially react to the allegation.

Why did it come to such a pass? Kolkata Police have always been considered a good crime-solving unit, boasting of some of the best sleuths in the land. So they would be expected to follow standard operating procedures when they were called in. But did they?

The questions, posed by junior doctors agitating since that day, the parents of the doctor, retired police officers familiar with such investigations and their likes, are many.

Why, for instance, was the crime scene not secured? Why were the parents not allowed to see their daughter’s body as soon as they arrived? Why did the post-mortem not take place outside RG Kar? Why was the FIR filed so late?

And then came the mob attack on the night of August 14. Such sorry a figure did the police cut that their entire role was considered suspicious and questions abound as to whether the force was trying to destroy evidence. The commissioner of Kolkata Police, Vineet Goyal, has acknowledged that his force came up short in anticipating the mob and its ferocity.

It’s brave of Goyal to acknowledge failure but it does show up the police in a very poor light. It’s clear that such is the trust deficit that few are willing to buy their argument or defence.

Chief minister Mamata Banerjee is known for her street-fighting ways and ability to work her way through a crisis. In this, she has spectacularly failed. First, she reinstated Sandip Ghosh, the now arrested former principal of RG Kar Medical College and Hospital, to Calcutta National Medical College hours after he had resigned on August 12 in the face of the storm of protests that engulfed the premises over his perceived lack of action in the wake of the horrific incident. It took the Calcutta High Court to order him to be sent on leave and it took a further three weeks for his suspension, that too only after the CBI arrested him on September 2 over corruption allegations.

A scan of old news reports from the time of the Kandahar hijack is revelatory. A report published in The Telegraph dated December 27, 1999, says that in a meeting convened by then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee on December 26, Mamata, then the Union railway minister, attacked the government for its “lethargy” in mounting a rescue effort.

Mamata even offered to lead a delegation to Kandahar to ensure the release of the hijacked Indian Airlines passengers on board IC 814.

Cut to 2024. Where is that Mamata Banerjee? She has got a bill passed in the Assembly that she says is an effective legislation to curb incidents of rape. The protesting junior doctors have dismissed it as a “sham”, saying it still doesn’t address issues of safety.

But has Mamata addressed the real issues? Has she gone into the heart of the outrage? A young doctor was brutally raped and murdered at her workplace in one of the busiest government hospitals in the heart of north Calcutta. Any workplace should be a safe place for all employees. This evidently was not.

For years, the systemic rot that was allowed to set in resulted in this. The rot was so deep that it gave the liberty to one man or many men — the CBI investigation has shed no light on this so far — to enter the seminar room in the Emergency wing of a bustling government hospital and brutalise the woman with impunity for over 30 minutes. Who will take responsibility? The principal? Of course. But only him? Shouldn’t the head of the government — who also heads the health and police departments — be held equally responsible?

Why couldn’t the chief minister of the state who is known to take crises head-on visit the RG Kar premises even once to speak to the agitating junior doctors? During the Hok Kolorob agitation over the alleged sexual harassment of a student at Jadavpur University and the months-long impasse that began in September 2014, it was finally Mamata who had driven to the Jadavpur University campus and announced the resignation of the then vice-chancellor, Abhijit Chakrabarti, in January 2015.

Mamata must realise her credibility is at stake here. Just taking to the roads in protest, or getting a bill passed isn’t going to calm the public anger and fury. The outrage is not limited to anti-TMC or pro-TMC people. She needs to rise above petty politics and act like a stateswoman. The investigation will take its course. The real issues still remain and she needs to address them.

The mess in Bengal’s health and education system has been bared by the series of scandals the government and the Trinamool Congress have been hit with. It’s time Mamata Banerjee decides if she’s going to behave like a boorish political leader who buries her head in the sand or begins the clean-up of a system that, having been abused for decades by political establishments for their vested interest, is rotten to the core.