A student of Presidency University, Kolkata has alleged that she was asked by a member of the SFI to ‘sleep with’ people associated with the BJP on the campus so that she could then play the victim card when SFI would come to ‘rescue’ her. In a Facebook post, the student said, “All of this started in first year, when Malyaban Ganguly came up to me and said I should try sleeping with the BJP people in campus and then play a victim card while SFI would come up to rescue me and this is how they would throw BJP out.” Malyaban is an SFI leader.
The student said that she was mortified by the suggestion and said that she was ‘shattered’. She then confronted some of her close friends associated with the SFI. She continued, “The story doesn’t end her (sic), few days later, Manjima Dasgupta asked me to come and meet her and talk about this in front of Malyaban Ganguly to make things clear, however I disagreed and we talked somewhat far from Sukumar Da’s place where I found Magur Da and Malyaban talking. Anyway, Manjima di said, this won’t be tolerated by SFI and she would take care that this kind of things don’t happen (sic) and also said that ami jeno egulo arr kauke na boil (I don’t tell anyone else about this).”
Subsequently, the student received calls from several members associated with the SFI and asked whether she had told anyone about the entire matter. She continued, “This is the time, when I found Malyaban Ganguly staring at me creepily in campus, and doing random things like if I’m talking to someone else, he would come and push him/her in a joking way and greet them while he knew that I’m inevitably traumatised by everything that he did.” Furthermore, she revealed a charade was orchestrated to give the pretense that Malyaban Ganguly had been suspended only for her to later find out that the entire matter was a farce.
The student said that she wouldn’t be taking any legal actions in the matter. She also said several people mocked her for being ‘uncomfortable’ with the entire incident. According to her, they proved that “Songothon shobar cheye boro” (The organization is bigger than everyone). She also said that nobody cared when she suggested that Malyaban apologized to her and sought counseling for his perverse conduct. She, however, said that she doesn’t have proof of the incident.
Another student of the university has also made accusations of sexual misconduct against Malyaban. She has alleged that he tried to kiss her without her consent “made it look like it was consensual” when it was not. Simultaneously, he was going around telling people that she was like his sister. She added, “I confronted him with the help of my friends and my seniors but he kept denying and stating that it was consensual.”
OpIndia reached out to the lady for her comments on the allegations she has put across, she told us that the grave allegations she put against SFI are not “tool which could be used to share right wing propaganda”.
Sexual harassment allegations against members of the Leftist student organizations have surfaced time and again in Kolkata. In 2018, a member of the Students Federation of India (SFI) and the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) who happened to be a student at Jadavpur University came forward with her account of the rampant sexual harassment she suffered within the organization. She had also encountered a negligent attitude from her higher-ups when she approached them over the matter.
