Even as the dust settles, the question that has still gone unanswered is, who is responsible for the communal riots in West Bengal’s Basirhat district?

A Facebook post by a 17-year-old Hindu boy on July 2, angered the Muslim community in North 24 Parganas district’s Baduria. The situation got dangerously out of control within hours. Thousands from the Muslim community had assembled in Rudrapur locality of Baduria by seven that same evening. The local people we spoke to claim that this crowd demanded not just the arrest of the youth but his hanging. The nation does, in fact, know what followed in the days after. But that evening, the fury of the mob was contained by religious leaders and elected representatives.

Abdul Matin of the All India Sunnat Al Jamayat (AISJ) had demanded the arrest of the accused within 24 hours, while he also assured the mob to leave the matter to the police. Baduria Congress legislator Abdul Rahim ‘Dilu’ played an instrumental role in controlling the situation in Baduria constituency. “It was important to inform those from the community about the arrest. The situation got out of control because the administration kept it a secret.” This meant that rumours kept spreading, adding fuel to the fire, he said, “Rumours spread, [the situation] snowballed and ultimately it went out of control.”

Rahim, who had won the 2016 assembly polls with the support of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), claimed police did not respond to the escalating situation adequately. “Police apna kaam pura nahi kiya (The police didn’t do their job properly).” he said. “Police kiska hai, kiska order lekar chal raha hai? Government kiska hai? (Who does the police report to? Who runs the government?),” the Baduria legislator asked. Attacking the Mamata Banerjee government, he said this situation was obviously a failure of the state government.

“Had they [the administration] called the all-party meeting the very next day, things won’t have escalated,” Rahim argued. His family has been representing the locality for several decades. His father, Quazi Abdul Gaffar, was the Congress legislator from Baduria until 2016.

According to Rahim, unlike other regions, Baduria has been communally peaceful despite being on the Bangladesh border. “Baduria has a secular face,” he said. He stated that the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) claim that Hindu women were targeted during the riots was patently wrong. “No Muslim had attacked Hindus and no Hindu had harmed Muslims in Baduria area…the police were the only target of the mob. They were attacked and their vehicles were damaged,” Rahim said.

He accused the BJP and the governing Trinamool Congress of playing communal politics. According to Rahim, while the BJP is targeting Hindu votes, Banerjee’s government is trying to appease Muslim voters in the state, who are also 30 per cent of the population. “She is following the left [CPI(M)] government’s policy –Muslim hamara hai, Muslim hamara hai (Muslims are our voters).” He agreed that such politics had communally charged the state.

Listen to Rahim speak on how internet services should have been suspended immediately following the protests, the possibility of Bangladeshi-Jamaat links in relation to the riots and much more.

The author can be contacted on Twitter @tweets_amit.