Two accused men were killed in separate police shootings in West Bengal on the same day after police said each had seized a firearm, fired at officers and was shot in retaliation. The striking similarity between the accounts in Gaighata and Dhuliyan has turned two criminal investigations into a wider test of how the state conducts custodial reconstruction, explains the use of force and protects public confidence in the justice system.
In Gaighata, in North 24 Parganas, police said Prahlad Das, arrested in connection with the rape and murder of a 17-year-old girl, took a police firearm while officers were returning from a reconstruction of the crime. According to the police account cited by Anandabazar, Das asked the officers to stop near Baidyabari to urinate, then seized a weapon and fired three rounds. One round allegedly hit the police vehicle and one police officer was injured. Police said officers fired four rounds in self-defence, one of which hit Das. He was taken to Chandpara Rural Hospital, where doctors declared him dead.
The family of the teenager had reported her missing after she left a local cultural programme late on Saturday night. Her body was recovered on Sunday morning. Police arrested Das, a relative of the family, the same day. The report says family members later stated that police brought him to their home at around 2am before taking him away again. The account does not establish the circumstances of that visit or independently verify the police description of the shooting.
The second incident took place in Dhuliyan, in Murshidabad district, during the investigation into the killing of businessman and BJP worker Sujit Mondal. Police took Samaun Sheikh to the Old Dak Bungalow area of Shamsherganj, where Mondal had allegedly been killed, for a reconstruction. The police said Sheikh seized an officer’s firearm and fired three rounds while trying to escape. He was shot in the police response and taken to Jangipur Sub-Divisional Hospital, where doctors declared him dead on arrival.
A Jangipur police district official, quoted in the report, said the state Criminal Investigation Department was investigating the murder and that the accused had been taken to the location for reconstruction when the firing occurred. Two other accused persons, Tajkira Bibi and Joni Sheikh, remained in custody after Sheikh’s death. The report says Sheikh and Tajkira had been living in Dhuliyan for about eight months while presenting themselves as husband and wife, according to police.
The immediate problem for public accountability is not only whether the accused were dangerous. It is whether the sequence described by police can be independently examined. In both cases, the reported chain is almost identical: an accused person is taken from custody to a crime scene, a firearm is allegedly taken from the police, three rounds are allegedly fired, and police respond with lethal force. That similarity does not prove wrongdoing. It does, however, make the procedures surrounding custody, transport, reconstruction and weapon control central to the public explanation.
The Gaighata episode has attracted particular questions because a human-rights organisation, the Association for Protection of Democratic Rights, raised doubts about taking a detainee for reconstruction at midnight and about the circumstances in which he was allegedly left able to seize a police weapon. Its vice-president Ranjit Shur questioned how the firearm was taken from the police. These are allegations and questions, not established findings, but they identify the operational details that any credible inquiry would need to clarify.
The Dhuliyan shooting also sits within an earlier controversy over police conduct. Mondal had disappeared from the Old Dak Bungalow area on August 28, and his dismembered body was later recovered. The report says his wife, Sumana Mondal, had repeatedly sought help at a local police outpost but allegedly did not receive it. The state government described this as a serious lapse. Several officers were suspended, another was attached to police headquarters, a departmental inquiry was ordered, a senior officer was transferred as punishment and the Jangipur superintendent of police was issued a show-cause notice.
That background matters because the same case moved from alleged failure to respond to a missing-person complaint to the fatal shooting of one of the arrested suspects. The two events are not evidence of the same misconduct, and the report does not establish that they are operationally connected. But together they show why public trust depends on more than arrest figures. Citizens assess the police system through both its ability to prevent or investigate crime and its ability to account for what happens after an arrest.
The political response has widened the debate. Chief Minister and Home Minister Shubhendu Adhikari said the new government would not spare criminals and that police officers would have freedom to act according to the circumstances in cases involving narcotics and crimes against women. Panchayat Minister Dilip Ghosh described the government’s approach as zero tolerance and said police might have to take “unpleasant” steps to restore public confidence. Ratna Debnath, a BJP legislator and the mother of a doctor killed at RG Kar Hospital, openly supported the Gaighata shooting and argued that such action could create fear among offenders.
These statements frame lethal police action as a deterrent and as a response to public anger over serious crimes. But other political voices drew a distinction between an armed confrontation and an encounter understood as a form of extra-judicial punishment. BJP state president Shamik Bhattacharya said the administration had acted according to the circumstances but objected to using the word “encounter” for the two incidents. Trinamool Congress legislator Shobhandeb Chattopadhyay said publicity could follow such shootings but pointed to the existence of law. Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury asked who should identify the actual offender: the court, a political party or the police station.
The disagreement is not merely semantic. The language used by governments and political parties shapes whether a death in custody is treated primarily as a security success or as an event requiring rigorous scrutiny. Calling an incident self-defence reflects the police version of events; establishing whether that version is correct requires evidence beyond official description. The report provides no findings from an independent inquiry, post-mortem examination, forensic analysis or judicial review of either shooting.
The incidents also expose a procedural vulnerability in crime-scene reconstruction. Reconstruction can help investigators test a suspect’s account and understand the physical setting of a crime. Yet it places a person in custody outside a police station and requires officers to manage movement, restraints, weapons and the surrounding public environment. In these cases, the alleged seizure of police firearms became the decisive event. The report does not explain the standard operating procedures used during either reconstruction, whether the accused were restrained, how weapons were secured, or whether independent witnesses were present.
Those unanswered details are important because the state’s credibility depends on whether its explanation can be tested. A police shooting may be justified if officers face an immediate threat, but the existence of a serious accusation does not by itself resolve what happened during the later encounter. The charges against Prahlad Das and Samaun Sheikh, the evidence against them and the circumstances of their deaths are separate questions. Treating a fatal police response as proof of guilt would collapse the distinction between investigation and punishment.
The report places the two shootings alongside the earlier death of Prabhas Mondal in a police shooting in Baruipur. In that case, police also said the accused had attempted to escape after taking a weapon, although the account cited in the report said only one round was fired before he was shot. The recurrence of similar explanations has prompted opposition leaders and civil-rights activists to ask whether a pattern is emerging. The available material does not establish such a pattern statistically, but it does establish that the question has entered West Bengal’s public debate.
The central institutional issue is therefore not whether citizens want protection from rape, murder and organised violence. They do. It is whether the pursuit of that protection can remain compatible with transparent investigation and accountable policing. The government’s own response to the Dhuliyan case shows that public safety failures can occur before an offence, during the investigation and after an arrest. A system that promises deterrence through force but cannot clearly explain custody procedures risks replacing one form of insecurity with another.
What is established so far is limited. Police have described both deaths as responses to attacks with seized firearms. Hospitals confirmed the deaths after the shootings. One police officer was reported injured in Gaighata, and the relevant criminal investigations were continuing. The source does not provide independent confirmation of the firing sequences or the findings of any inquiry. The next significant developments will therefore be the formal investigative and forensic records, the treatment of the surviving accused in the Dhuliyan case, and any official or judicial examination of how the two reconstructions were conducted.
