At last there is real reason to be grateful to the police. The most important members of this much-maligned institution in West Bengal have openly declared what their real interests are to the misguided populace. While this populace pays them to catch robbers and murderers, prevent accidents and punish reckless drivers, and even to catch a rapist or two, the police have no time for all this. Their job has nothing to do with the law. Rather, they provide examples of how to go against the law, by erupting into the conjugal life of a legally married couple and conniving with the wife’s parents to compel her to return to her natal family — a kind of disguised abduction through enforced consent. To achieve this, Rizwanur Rahman, the husband, was treated to a ceaseless round of visits and threatening calls, and a series of interviews with police bosses in their headquarters in Lalbazar, where he was allegedly threatened with false cases, bullied and serially insulted. He had no peace till he was driven to an untimely and agonizing death. Once the police had mediated in separating him and his wife, they ignored the agreement that she would return to her husband within seven days. Rizwanur’s conjugal rights were lawful. Why should the police be interested?

But they would make very good uncles. The police commissioner made clear at the press conference that how a girl, brought up in a prosperous businessman’s household, would live after marrying into a family far beneath her parents’ economic and social status is very much a police concern. His brazenness was educative. This was the police proudly claiming their territory. He did not clarify what Lalbazar had to do with the matter, since in the case of a complaint of abduction from parents, it is only the local police station that is empowered to investigate. The fact that Rizwanur and his wife, Priyanka, took each step legally, and that Rizwanur presented detailed records of harassment to a human rights body have obscured another fundamental issue. No one has the right to intervene if two consenting adults decide to live together, married or not. But constitutional and human rights are not the police’s business either.

The police seem to feel avuncular towards a particular economic class only. The girl’s father, it has been said, is an old and friendly acquaintance. Rizwanur and his family certainly are not. The police commissioner, the graceless media complained, refused to answer a lot of questions. There should be some sympathy for him and his colleagues — no one likes to be caught with an essential part of his apparel down. But it is not enough to have the mystery of Rizwanur’s death cleared and the murderers or abettors punished. West Bengal would like to know what its home (police) minister is going to do about the unlawful and dangerous avuncular bias of his department.