On Wednesday (April 26), West Bengal Chief Minister stirred the hornet’s nest after she claimed that the alleged ‘rape and murder case in Kaliganj was a ‘love affair’ gone wrong.
While addressing a press conference at Nabanna (State Secretariat), she claimed, “Amader o dukho hoi… Kintu amra Whatsapp total ta peyechi…Tader modhe ekta bhalobashar udyog o chilo (We feel bad about it….But we have seen Whatsapp messages… There was a love affair.”
“Doctors said she had taken poison. It’s a suicide case. The police are investigating,” she was quoted as saying. Although the investigation is in a preliminary stage, Mamata Banerjee went out of her way to suggest that there was no foul play in the death of the Kaliganj victim.
On April 21 morning, the dead body of a 17-year-old Dalit girl was discovered floating in a canal in the Kaliagunj area in Uttar Dinajpur district of West Bengal. The kins of the victim alleged that the teenager was raped prior to her murder.
The girl had gone missing on her way to tuition classes on April 20. As per reports, the police had arrested two individuals, including one Javed Akhtar, who was known to the victim. The National Commission of Women (NCW) has taken cognisance of the matter.
Interestingly, this is not the first time that Mamata Banerjee had suggested that allegations of rape committed in the State were either bitter love affairs or motivated by political vendetta. In the past, she has even accused victims of lying and staging a ‘rape’ to defame her government.
Mamata Banerjee, TMC and dismissing rape cases
An Anglo-Indian woman, Suzette Jordan, was raped in a moving car by five men on February 6, 2012, when she was returning home from Park Street in Kolkata.
Soon after the news surfaced, TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee absolved the accused of all charges. She had dubbed the incident as ‘shajano ghotona‘ (concocted incident), which was allegedly ‘designed to malign the government.’
While speaking to a news channel, TMC MP Kakoli Ghose Dhastidar cast aspersions on the character of the victim and also ruled out the rape angle.
She stated, “If you are referring to the Park Street case, see that’s a different one altogether. It’s not at all a rape case. It was a misunderstanding between two people in a professional dealing between the lady and her client.”
At the same time, the then Transport Minister had also questioned the victim’s character and called the complaint fake. 3 years later in 2015, a Kolkata Court upheld the rape charges in the Park Street case and found accused Nasir Khan, Ruman Khan and Sumit Bajaj guilty.
In 2013, during a debate in the West Bengal legislative assembly about the rising cases of rapes in the State, the CM had insinuated that it was due to an increase in the population of the State. She had also blamed modernisation, an increase in shopping malls and multiplexes for rising rape cases.
During another rape case in Burdwan’s Katwa in the same year, Mamata Banerjee again dismissed the rape allegations, even before the investigation was concluded.
“A political party is doing all this, shouting rape. They are playing this drama. Harmader diye natok shajachhe jatey Banglar nam kharap hochhe (They are staging an act to give a bad name to West Bengal)”, she was heard as saying.
In April last year, Mamata Banerjee courted controversy after she tried to downplay allegations of brutal rape and murder of a 14-year-old girl as a ‘love affair’ gone wrong.
The incident, in question, took place on April 4, 2022, in the Shyamnagar locality in Hanskhali Block Number- I in the Nadia district of West Bengal. The accused has been identified as one Brajgopal, the son of Trinamool Congress (TMC) Gajna Gram Panchayat member Samar Gowla.
While speaking at the inauguration of the revamped Milan Mela on April 11, she claimed, “As a layman, I am saying where would someone get the evidence whether the girl was actually raped or pregnant. Or was there any other reason, like someone beat her up or she died of some illness?”
“There was a love affair for sure, her family knew about it, and their neighbours also knew about it. Now if a girl and a boy love each other, I cannot punish them”, alleged Mamata Banerjee.
While her recent remarks have stirred a hullabaloo in political circles of West Bengal, there is nothing surprising given that Mamata Banerjee has a stellar record at trivialising rape and victim-blaming.
