A year after the horrific firing by security forces in Madhya Pradesh’s Mandsaur district in which five protesting farmers were killed, a one-man probe panel seems to have given the law enforcement agencies a clean chit. No one has been held accountable by the Justice (retd) J K Jain panel—not the cops who pulled the trigger, not the Superintendent of Police O P Tripathi under whose watch the situation was mismanaged and not even the then district collector Swatantra Kumar Singh. Both had been transferred last year by the administration in the wake of the firings to calm down tempers. Their records are now clean.
The firing happened in two locations on June 6 last year. In the first case, the report claimed an angry mob assaulted two CRPF jawans and tried to snatch their rifles. When other CRPF personnel tried to intervene, they got similar treatment. Left with no other option, the CRPF opened fire, killing two protestors. Another mob then tried to storm a police station and burn it down. Policemen were forced to open fire in self-defence, the report reasoned, killing three protestors. The police though erred in not following the standard operating procedure (SOP) of firing at the legs of the protestors, Justice Jain conceded.
When the Jain panel was first set up, activists and the Opposition had bitterly criticised it saying it would hardly serve any meaningful purpose. Without fixing accountability there will be no closure for the families of the five farmers who needlessly lost their lives. If the purpose of the report was to airbrush the image of the government with Assembly polls around the corner, it could help CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan to an extent. Was that why the report was leaked?
Down South, similar police firings in Thoothukudi last month killed 13 protestors. There again, mobs were blamed for the police action. Also, images of snipers shooting to kill went viral showing how the police ignored the SOPs. TN too appointed a retired high court judge to probe it. Will its recommendation be any different?