Allegations of sexual harassment and misconduct are mounting against SFI member Malyaban Ganguly of Presidency University, Kolkata. On Monday we had reported that a student of the University had alleged that she was asked to sleep with ‘BJP people’ on the campus so that she could play the victim card when SFI came to her ‘rescue’. Now, more female students are coming forward with their own harrowing accounts of Malyaban’s perverse behaviour.
According to a person who does not wish to reveal her identity, she was the victim of Malyaban’s predatory conduct on two separate occasions. The first was on the 21st of March when popular Bengali celebrity Anjan Dutt was performing on the campus. On the said day, Malyaban had walked up to her drunk with a bottle of soft drinks in his hand that was spiked with alcohol. Then, he started ranting about how people have been ‘plotting’ against him so that they could ‘ruin his political career’. Subsequently, he asked her whether he could sleep with his head on her lap as he was dizzy from all that drinking. She did not object to it.
Then, he proceeded to hold her hands. But before long, “I hate to say this, but he began licking it, sucking it (my hand was placed on my lap, right beside where he kept his head). I felt extremely uncomfortable, I expressed my disgust (to which he showed no reaction) and I took my hand away.” She ultimately went away after telling him that he was drunk and not in his senses.
The second incidence occurred on the 10th of April, 2019 when the popular band Mohiner Ghoragoli was supposed to perform in the campus. The student was extremely drunk when she and her boyfriend decided to remove themselves from the crowd and sit separately. They walked towards the Performing Arts department and were followed by Malyaban. After they found a place to sit, Malyaban sat between the two.
She says, “Malyaban was talking very sweetly with us, in the meanwhile, he began caressing my love handles and my back and then went on to touch my butt. We were sitting side by side over there and my boyfriend could not see what was going, and I was too drunk to even realise.” As soon as the boyfriend realized what was happening, he pushed Malyaban away and asked her to call her driver at once. The boyfriend took her away and waited for her to arrive. The entire series of events was narrated to her by her boyfriend at a later point in time as she was too drunk back then. She said further, “Malyaban had often passed insensitive, derogatory remarks about how he would have tried his hands on me if his friend and comrade wouldn’t have fallen for me.”
Yet another student has also accused Malyaban of molesting her. The student, who has chosen to remain anonymous, says that on one particular occasion she was drunk and gossiping with her friends when she received a call from Malyaban to meet him. Despite her initial refusal, he blackmailed her emotionally and thus, she finally relented. She says, “I went there we met and he took me to a place and started kissing me as because I was quite drunk I couldn’t stop him forcefully but I tried my level best to stop him but failed miserably.”
Numerous others associated with the SFI have been accused of sexual harassment and molestation by students of the Presidency University. Sexually perverse behaviour in leftist enclaves has become the norm as of late. Two years ago, 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. Since then, numerous allegations have surfaced.