just-one-kick-the-collapse-of-an-image

In the early morning hush, a black SUV drew up to the gate of a south Kolkata park, known to be a morning walkers’ hub. Manoj Verma stepped out, dressed in a pair of modest track pants and a plain white T-shirt. His wife, also clad in white, usually accompanied him, as she did that day. The scene was quiet, undramatic. No fanfare. No disturbance.

 

The couple walked side by side through the gate, while the security detail stayed behind, forming a respectful perimeter around the gleaming black vehicle. The insignia of rank was absent — the brass flagstaff on the bonnet glittered in the sun, empty. Even the star-marked board beneath the number plate had been deliberately veiled.

 

After taking a few steps inside, Verma slid a pair of dark sunglasses onto his eyes. His wife then quietly faded into a crowd of morning strollers, indistinguishable among them.

 

Verma was reluctant to disclose his top-cop identity and engage in chitchatting with fellow walkers. It felt normal. After all, when the Caliph of Baghdad roamed his city in disguise, recognition would have broken the illusion. Verma, by the weight of his office, is Kolkata’s de facto king.

 

It was Mamata Banerjee who had summoned Manoj Verma to replace Vineet Goyal as Kolkata Police Commissioner during the tumultuous RG Kar rape and murder case. Unlike Goyal, Verma is no former IITian, no polished academic. He is, in the truest sense, a field officer — a battle-hardened professional. He quelled the unrest in the hills, restored calm in Barrackpore, and suppressed the Maoist insurgency in Lalgarh. A man familiar with the heft of a rocket launcher slung over his shoulder and the weight of an assault rifle across his chest. No dabbler. An officer of action.

 

Since assuming charge, this resolute IPS officer has been relentless in attempting to rehabilitate the tarnished image of the Kolkata Police. He has stood beside his force in times of crisis, attending volatile situations in person, embodying leadership in action. After the RG Kar rape and murder episode, the force had been morally crippled. Verma sought to restore dignity, to reforge the police into protectors, not predators.

 

And yet, the earth beneath that hard-won progress caved in with a single, impulsive kick.

 

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Every profession is governed by unspoken codes. In policing, there is a clear demarcation between the permissible and the forbidden. When a protest turns unruly, a baton may be wielded. That is within protocol. The press may euphemistically refer to it as a "mild" lathi charge, though insiders know there is no such thing. Force is applied as needed — sometimes symbolically, sometimes with intent. But never is a public, degrading kick justifiable. Especially not to a protester who is, above all else, a teacher.

 

That solitary kick shattered more than just the dignity of its victim. It punctured the credibility of an entire institution. It dismantled the fragile scaffolding of public trust that Verma had been painstakingly erecting.

 

In the aftermath, Verma was compelled to stand before cameras — alongside chief secretary Manoj Pant — and denounce the act. He had to label the incident “undesirable.” He had to acknowledge that the police were provoked, insulted, assaulted, their barricades breached. He had to defend the force’s right to resist chaos, even as the shadow of that one kick loomed large.

 

Yes, the crowd was unruly. Yes, the DI office in south Kolkata’s Kasba was nearly overrun. And yes, the police had to act. But that is not what history will remember. The camera did not capture the broken barricades. It captured a boot to the ribs of a teacher. And that image, more than any official statement, has cemented itself in public consciousness.

 

Embarrassed by the action of a single officer, additional director general of police (law and order) Jawed Shamim issued a directive instructing police in districts to deal with teachers’ agitation with dialogues instead of using force.

 

Kicking carries a weight that a baton does not. It is not merely violent — it is humiliating. To be kicked is to be debased. Revolutionaries are kicked. Criminals are kicked. And when a teacher is kicked in public, society flinches — not just in sympathy, but in shame.

 

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Only one officer delivered the blow. The others followed procedure, tried to contain the protest within protocol. Some of them were injured. But the narrative is no longer theirs to control. Society, with its ever-hungry appetite for condemnation, has already chosen its villain. One image, one act, has undone years of toil and integrity.

 

Is it unfair? Perhaps. But the world is indifferent to fairness. Its scales are forever tipped toward cruelty. Where was fairness for the countless candidates now walking the streets, their jobs voided by a sweeping court order that blurred the line between the deserving and the fraudulent? Was it fair that the government, which once promised support, now stands accused of betrayal?

 

In Netaji Indoor Stadium, Mamata Banerjee had offered words of reassurance. Days later, one of those very teachers was felled by a police boot. Can anyone say this was justified?

 

In that one moment, the Kolkata Police's renewed mission — to be fierce against the wicked and gentle with the good — crumbled. All of Verma’s efforts at revival and reform were erased by a single act of misconduct. And as that image circulates, it is not just a kick that people see — they see every past injustice, every abuse of power, resurrected in their memory.

 

The fire that had died down now flares anew.

 

And so, as Manoj Verma walks among morning joggers in his white clothes and dark glasses, silent, introspective, one cannot help but wonder: Is this what he is thinking? That everything — the battles, the discipline, the progress — came undone… because of one kick?

 

By Pranab Mondal