Written By: Reshmi Dasgupta

News18.com

Last Updated: August 19, 2024, 10:34 IST

New Delhi, India

It is almost as if Mamata Banerjee has decided to, as Mark Antony famously imagined in Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar, “Cry Havoc! (Image: PTI)

Not in living memory has such a scene unfolded before the eyes of Bengalis on Sunday: East Bengal and Mohun Bagan football club supporters facing lathi-wielding policemen outside Salt Lake Stadium, shoulder-to-shoulder; in fact, on each other’s shoulders. For those who know the legendary rivalry of the two big Kolkata clubs in football-mad Bengal, it was nothing short of extraordinary. The rape-murder of the young doctor has galvanised an entire state.

Across Bengal fans of both clubs conducted joint marches chanting “Justice for RG Kar”. Every Bengali worth her hilsa or chingri (the favoured seafood of each team) will realise this is truly unprecedented. Not in her worst nightmares, not in all the previous cases of rape and rape-murder—from Park Street to Kamduni, Madhyamgram to Sandeshkhali—that she managed to weather, would the Chief Minister have imagined that things would come to such a pass.

Images of men in fatigues chasing people down the main arterial road that skirts the eastern limit of the city and leads to the airport shocked those sitting down with their evening cuppa. Worse still, with a straight face senior police officials averred they had cancelled the match as they had “specific information” of a mob that would disrupt it. So, they knew about a mob about to disrupt a football match, but had no inkling about the one that attacked RG Kar!

For the benefit of the media, a police........

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