Wrong turn taken by lightheaded brigade

Tennyson fans know their lines from the poet’s ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade‘: ‘Cannon to right of them/ Cannon to left of them,/ Cannon in front of them/ Volleyed and thundered…/ Rode the six hundred.’ Our Enforcement Directorate (ED) may not be the British light cavalry that charged to its doom in 1854 against the Russian artillery in the Crimean War. But, this week, in Tennyson’s words, ‘someone had blundered’ within the economic law enforcement agency. On February 7, ED officials rushed into the residence of a Sandip Sadhukhan, employee of West Bengal government‘s building construction department.

This being West Bengal, and ED being an amorphous entity that has, of late, been set loose to enter any suspicious nook and cranny smelling of suspect money, it could have been just another case of ‘So ja, beta, nahi toh sarkar ka Gabbar aa jayega’. Except, this light brigade did a heavy-handed job. Greeting (sic) ED officials was Sadhukhan’s son, who, after checking the warrant – that charged his father with discrepancy in 100 days’ work-related documents – found that the address and police station didn’t match the Sadhukhans’ residential address. EDiotic as it may sound, no charges – of the light or heavy brigade variety – were pressed against the dreaded enforcement agency. ‘This is not America,’ a disgruntled neighbour was overheard saying.