The Kolkata Police through its Facebook page on Friday morning thanked social media users for providing them vital information that led to five arrests over the vandalism and violence at RG Kar Medical College and Hospital that occurred in the early hours of Thursday.

That night, thousands took to the streets to protest against the rape and murder of a postgraduate trainee doctor. Amid the peaceful protests, mobs of hooligans broke police barricades, entered the RG Kar Hospital and smashed up the Emergency ward on the ground floor besides ransacking the doctors’ protest site.

The mob didn’t even spare officers of the Kolkata Police, whom chief minister Mamata Banerjee had called the “best police force in the world” a day before.

The violence, broadcast live in TV channels, added to the public outrage. Even Calcutta high court on Friday slammed it as “absolute failure of state machinery”.

“Doctor logo ko maro [attack the doctors]..this was the absolute bloody plan,” Debasis Datta, officer-in-charge of Maniktala police station, told the media right after the violence started. A few minutes later, he was bleeding from the head. His white uniform had blood stains. This was around 1 am.

PTI

Around 2 am, Calcutta police commissioner Vineet Goyal reached the spot. He seemed visibly shaken and angry while talking to the media. He blamed rumours, malicious media and social media campaigns for police losing the trust of the people.

A few hours after Goyal’s press brief, on Thursday, the Kolkata Police social media page put up a post saying, “We will initiate legal action for spreading rumours”.

Some users of the social media platform X later put up posts saying they had received calls from the police.

Less than 24 hours later, the police thanked the public and wrote on Facebook, “Thank you for your support, and your trust.”

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On Friday morning, the police informed that 19 miscreants of the RG Kar violence had been arrested. Out of them five, or 25 per cent of the total arrests, were possible because social media users identified the hooligans from the pictures that the police put up on their social media page.

A cursory glance at the posts show that users are giving out information about the names of the criminals and the areas where they belong to.

This leads to an inevitable question: Has the network of anti-rowdy officers and their band of informers weakened? In these days of social media proliferation, are the people of the city the new informers for the police?

Whatever be the answer, it seems the Kolkata Police have realised that social media is not all evil.