By Saroj Mishra
Obsessed with his own "clean" image, Orissa chief minister Naveen Patnaik has shifted Binoy Behera, the first police commissioner of Cuttack and Bhubaneswar following a gangster's claim that the top cop had met him before Judo coach Biranchi Das' murder.

Behera was shunted out despite his denials. His transfer came hard on the heels of a reshuffle effected in the higher echelons of the twin city police commisionerate in the wake of allegations of a criminal-police nexus. The allegations, ironically, were brought up by Behera himself. Now he seems hung with his own petard.

But that is not the issue. The core issue is the panic reaction of the government to such allegations and the kind of effect it is likely to have on the morale of the force. Having already made a mess of the Biranchi murder case, the government seems to behaving like a cat on a hot tin roof.

The transfers including that of two deputy police commissioners in the first instance can still be explained as they followed the statement of the commissioner himself. But a commissioner being shifted because a gangster points a finger at him minutes before his surrender is mind boggling.

Dispassionately speaking, the statement of Raja Acharya, the main accused in the Biranchi Das murder case, appearing in a newspaper the morning after his arrest should not have been given any importance at all. While he had taken several names before his surrender, he took the opportunity to add another big name to the list with the obvious purpose of confusing the police and changing the direction of the probe.

What Raja said was at best the claim of a history sheeter who had been on the run for more than two weeks before his surrender. Pitted against this was the denial of Behera, a police officer with an excellent service record. The government has done the khaki force a singular disservice by shifting Behera and thereby creating an impression that he was in the wrong.

The golden rule not only in politics but in every walk of life is that nothing should be taken to extremes. Chief minister, Naveen Patnaik seems to be taking his "clean" image a bit too seriously which, contrary to what he and his cronies believe, may sometimes send a wrong message to the people besides creating resentment within the bureaucracy and the police.

One wonders whether Patnaik has ever thought that his action has actually made a hero out of a gangster while terribly weakening the case against him.

While the relentless media coverage of Biranchi case with exclusive focus on Raja has already given the history sheeter a larger than life image, the transfer of a host of police officers during the investigation is bound to redound to his advantage.

In the specific context of this case, the government has given Raja's lawyer a handle to beat it with by frequently shifting its own officers raising obvious doubts about their integrity. In a broader perspective, its actions have dealt a severe blow to the morale of the police force.