SHILLONG, JULY 29: Opposition All India Trinamool Congress (AITC) state president Charles Pyngrope on Saturday asserted the need for an independent probe into the July 24-mob attack at the CMO in Tura, which according to police was pre-planned and a conspiracy to murder the chief minister Conrad K Sangma.
“An independent probe will definitely go down well with the people of Meghalaya as we also want to know the truth as to who has committed it,” Pyngrope, who is also a Nongthymmai legislator, told reporters.
Condemning the incident, he said, “As president of the party and as legislator, I totally condemned the incident that happened in Tura irrespective of who were the perpetrators of the incident because civilization like ours, we can’t afford to behave like barbarians and specially to try and bodily harm the chief minister I mean it is a disgrace to our community and to the state as a whole and such things should never have occurred in the first place. That is my view.”
Urging all concerns to refrain from politicizing the issue, the former Assembly Speaker said, “But my humble request is let not politicize the matter and not say it was the TMC or the BJP or the Congress. They have picked up some people and they have interrogated them so let the truth prevail and then law will take its own course.”
He however refused to comment on the statement made by AITC parliamentary party leader and former chief minister Mukul Sangma that police have reduced themselves as “instrument of political bosses in the government”.
Terming the arrest of the party’s youth leader Richard Mrong Marak as illogical, Pyngrope said, “In the case of Richard Marak, I was made to understand that at that point of time he was not even in the place of occurrence so I find it quite surprising that the police picked him up. Let them pick him up for questioning but detaining was somehow not logical.”
“As far as my knowledge goes his (Marak) wife has been discharged from the hospital at the same day and I was made to understand that he was with his wife at that time in his own residence,” he said while adding that let the commission of inquiry come out with the facts and figures.
When asked, Pyngrope said police, when they get the inputs of what is going to happen, should have acted swiftly irrespective of whether it happens or not because the chief minister is a protected person even as he wondered how the crowd manage to get that close (to the CMO) in the first place.
“Well if they had the information like the DGP said we knew that something is up, then they should have put proper SOPs in place that’s how to deter such an incident, when you are aware that the incident is going to happen,” he stated.
“If there is video evidence then the police have done their job. We are not denying that we need evidence and if there is video evidence the court of law will see it and accordingly the judgment will be passed,” Pyngrope further added.
Meanwhile, talking about the overall law and order situation in the state, the AITC state president said that the police department has to bring reformation by putting officers who can handle law and order situations to avoid such incidents in the future.
“The other incidents you are talking about, police have to be more active. I would say we can’t blame them for everything as half of the time they are also overburdened and I was made to understand they were understaffed. So the reformation of the department with officers who can handle the situation must be put in the right place so as to avoid such incidents in the future,” he asserted.
By Our Reporter
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