Admitting that the main accused is linked to its student wing, the party condemned attempts to politicise the issue.
After the rape of a law student in Kolkata triggered a political firestorm, the Trinamool Congress has admitted that the main accused is linked to the party’s student wing but insisted that this would not come in the way of him getting the strictest possible punishment.
The alleged gang rape of a law student from West Bengal’s Kolkata – months after the horrific RG Kar rape-murder case – has triggered a fresh and (furious) showdown between the ruling Trinamool Congress and the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party ahead of the Assembly election next year.
Three men – including Manojit Mishra, a 31-year-old former student of the South Calcutta Law College -in Kolkata’s Kasba area – have been arrested and charged with rape. The other two men – Zaib Ahmed and Pramit Mukhopadhyay, according to news agency ANI – are believed to be current students.
According to the police, mobile phones with videos of the rape – videos used to threaten and bully the 24-year-old survivor into staying silent about the attack – were seized from the accused.
A practicing lawyer, Mishra is the primary accused and the BJP – on the warpath with one eye firmly on the forthcoming election – has shared photographs showing him with senior leaders from Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool, including her nephew and second-in-command Abhishek Banerjee.
The BJP has also raked up the RG Kar case to highlight the ‘sinking into lawlessness’.
BJP National Spokesperson Pradeep Bhandari and the party’s IT chief, Amit Malviya posted images that seem to show Mishra standing next to Trinamool leaders including Abhishek Banerjee; Health Minister Chandrima
The RG Kar Rape, Murder
This comes 10 months after a rape and murder at the RG Kar Medical College and Hospital.
The RG Kar case, as that came to be called, made national headlines for its brutality; the woman’s body was found in a seminar room on the college premises and the autopsy concluded she had been raped and possibly tortured – there were injuries to her genitals, the left leg and right hand, and face.
The cause of death was strangulation.
Sanjay Roy, a 33-year-old civic volunteer for Kolkata Police, was arrested and convicted for the rape and murder of the woman, and was sentenced to life in prison, a punishment seen by many as lenient.
Many, including the family, had demanded the death sentence.
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