The Assam Police’s arrest of Gujarat MLA and popular Dalit movement leader Jignesh Mevani over a tweet asserting that Prime Minister Modi “considers (Gandhi’s assassin) Godse to be God” and challenging him to visit riot-hit areas has once again brought home the role of the police in India as an arm of the ruling BJP. The Assam Police came all the way to his constituency in Vadgam to arrest him and take him to Kokrajhar in Assam.

The chilling midnight murder of Anish Khan, former student leader of Kolkata’s Aliyah University and a familiar face of Kolkata’s CAA protests and various solidarity campaigns, by pushing him down from the roof of his own three-storied home at Amta in Howrah district has justifiably triggered massive public anger in West Bengal. According to his father, a gang in police uniform barged into their house around midnight on 18 February and while one of them stopped him at gunpoint, others went up and threw Anish down from the roof.