Pressure groups from Garo Hills have asked Home Minister Lahkmen Rymbui to immediately remove West Garo Hills Superintendent of Police, Vivekanand Singh Rathore.
In a letter to Rymbui, the FKJGP Garo Hills Zone, ADE, AYWO and FAF alleged that Rathore had directed the police to arrest members of the pressure groups who acted against illegal trade of tobacco products in Garo Hills.
The pressure groups mentioned that Tura police had filed a suo-moto case against six persons on February 13 on the basis that the people were involved in tax laundering with regards to the sale of Bidi with the accusations that the Bidi products were being brought to Tura without the payment of GST. Police also seized certain amounts of the Bidis along with cash amounting to not less than Rs. 6 lakh.
“On learning about the matter we did some fact finding on our own into the matter and our investigation revealed that not only that the Bidis were being shipped to our markets without any payment of GST but also that none of the Bidis have any tag of Maximum Retail Price (MRP) in any of their packaging be it the packets or bundles. We also are clueless as to how a 28 per cent of GST can be paid for a product which doesn’t have any MRP,” the pressure groups said.
They also said that due to the illegalities involved the shopkeepers in and around Tura had stopped selling Bidis openly, but, all transactions of Bidis are being done discreetly.
“This statement can be easily verified if one goes to the market areas and inquires about Bidi, whereby every shopkeeper will deny having Bidi in stock, however, the supply of illegally supplied Bidis in Tura Town and its outskirts are going on in full swing. As such, we conducted a surprise raid in Rongram Bazar on May 26 whereby all shopkeepers denied having Bidis in their possession. However, upon checking we found huge quantities of Bidis from different stores. Due to the illegalities involved we have seized the Bidis and have submitted the same to the Deputy Commissioner, West Garo Hills District on May 27. But on our way back home after our inspection, the SP instructed the police to intercept us, and accordingly our members were apprehended by the police of Tura Sadar Police Station. We understand that it will be the concern of any officer of law to maintain law and order in his/her jurisdiction. However, the incumbent SP was all aggressive towards us and directed his officers to detain us for the night. Due to intervention from our fellow colleagues and some elderly women’s groups we were not ultimately detained,” the pressure groups said.
Stating that the action of the SP is questionable and unethical “as his approach was to solely aggravate the situation rather than to have any understanding of the matter”, the pressure groups also said that they were suspicious of his intentions.
“We have no intentions to do anything that undermines the law of the land and we are willing to cooperate and have cooperated with the police in the past as well. However, if the SP’s intention was to resolve the issue in any logical sense he would not have resorted to such aggressive gung-ho tactics as to try to detain leaders of four NGOs for a night in police custody for actions that any self respecting citizen would have done,” the pressure groups said.
Expressing displeasure with the SP’s action, the pressure groups urged the Home Minister to transfer Rathore immediately from West Garo Hills “in order to restore the trust between the police and the public”.
