Soaring crime graph in WB unnerves Left Front leaders

Though the truth in this story has not been ascertained, the fact remains that concern over growing incidents of crime in the metropolis and elsewhere has deepened in recent times. For the last five months, denizens of the state haven’t spent a single day without learning about incidents of murder, dacoity and rape.

What has particularly unnerved the Left Front circles has been the fact that the criminals, moving with bombs, guns and other firearms, are fearlessly committing the gruesome acts and getting away with it in most of the cases. It was not without a reason that a terribly annoyed Basu publicly censured the police administration last month, saying, “let’s admit we have failed to arrest the trend.” Jyoti Basu, who had many more unflattering things to say about the police administration, also added that there was complete collapse of the information network which led to the spurt of crime in WB. Another dreadful side unfolded by the trend, political killings, has led to considerable discomfort among the LF leaders, particularly the Communist Party of India (Marxist). Recently, an influential district-level CPI(M) leader of 24-Paraganas was gunned down in a running train allegedly by the goons he nurtured to silence his rivals within the party. Shocked over the murder, which threatened to unfold the “close nexus between the politicians and criminals,” top leaders were even thinking of an inter-party probe into the incident.