West Bengal’s top bureaucrat, Dushyant Nariala, came under sharp scrutiny from the Supreme Court on Monday after the bench questioned why the Chief Justice of the Calcutta High Court could not reach him during the Malda hostage episode in which seven judicial officers were surrounded while on election-related duty. The court said the lapse reflected a serious failure of administrative responsiveness at a sensitive moment and directed Nariala to apologise to the High Court Chief Justice. The hearing arose from the fallout of the April 1 violence in Malda district, where seven judicial officers engaged in work linked to the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls were held for hours by an angry crowd. The Supreme Court, hearing the matter on April 6, also ordered that the investigation be handed over to the National Investigation Agency, signalling its lack of confidence in the handling of the case by local authorities.
Nariala, who was appointed by the Election Commission on March 16 ahead of the assembly election process, told the court that he had travelled to Delhi for a meeting and was on a flight during part of the period in question. He maintained that no officer from Kolkata had called him on his phone. The bench was unconvinced. Justice Joymalya Bagchi observed that even if the official had been unavailable while airborne, he could have been reached later in the evening had he shared an accessible number and other contact particulars.
When Nariala said the number he used was “more secure” and offered better connectivity, the court’s reaction grew sharper. Justice Bagchi asked whether the level of security around the chief secretary was so high that even the Chief Justice of the Calcutta High Court could not contact him. The exchange culminated in Nariala expressing regret and the bench directing that an apology be tendered to the High Court Chief Justice. The Supreme Court also remarked that the episode pointed to a broader bureaucratic obstinacy that courts were encountering elsewhere.
The bench, comprising Chief Justice of India Surya Kant, Justice Joymalya Bagchi and Justice Vipul M. Pancholi, stopped short of taking further action against the state officials who had been summoned to explain the breakdown. Its order recorded that the officers had appeared online and expressed the hope that they had understood the responsibility expected of them when judicial officers were placed in danger. Even so, the language used in court left little doubt about its displeasure. The Chief Justice described the episode as a failure of both the chief secretary and the administration.
The Malda incident has become politically explosive because it unfolded in the middle of a tense electoral exercise. According to court reporting and contemporaneous accounts, the judicial officers were deployed in connection with adjudicatory work tied to objections and claims arising from the voter-roll revision. Protesters in parts of Kaliachak and Mothabari, angered over deletions from the rolls, blocked roads and surrounded officials, and the officers were only freed after prolonged intervention. Reports from the ground said their rescue was followed by attacks on vehicles, underlining how rapidly the law-and-order situation had deteriorated.
The Supreme Court’s decision to transfer the probe to the NIA is among the strongest steps taken so far. The court said all FIRs registered by the local police in connection with the episode would move to the central agency, and that the NIA would be free to register further cases if needed. It also required that investigation reports be filed before the appropriate NIA court in Kolkata while continuing to update the Supreme Court before any chargesheet is submitted. That intervention is notable because the bench invoked its extraordinary powers even though the offences may not ordinarily fall within the agency’s standard remit.
The case has also exposed a deeper institutional fault line: the vulnerability of judicial and quasi-judicial officers when courts assign them duties in politically charged field conditions. By focusing not only on the crowd violence but also on the response of senior administrators, the Supreme Court has broadened the issue from one of local disorder to one of constitutional accountability. Its criticism suggested that access, coordination and urgency at the top levels of government matter as much as boots on the ground when public order collapses.