It has been around three weeks that horror stories of sexual abuse, landgrab, violence and torture have surfaced in West Bengal’s Sandeshkhali, a remote village in North 24 Parganas district near India’s border with Bangladesh. The brave women of Sandeshkhali have come out of their homes to demonstrate against the misrule of the local Trinamool Congress leader, Shahjahan Sheikh, who has a vise-grip on the area. The fire lit by them is spreading from village to village, with the chorus of complaints against the ruling party’s musclemen reaching a crescendo. The situation is getting volatile, as the locals attack the houses of TMC leaders. The police, in spite of allegations of adopting strong arm-tactics, is unable to control the unrest. There is allegation of a police vehicle hitting women protesters, injuring them, but even that has not deterred the women from carrying on with their agitation.
Overall, the Sandeshkhali episode reeks of attempts to cover up, brazenness and complete mismanagement on the part of the state administration—all symptoms of the disease that is eating up the innards of Bengal. Till date the state government is denying that any incident of sexual abuse took place in Sandeshkhali, which automatically sends a signal to the police not to register any such cases. The Bengal government seems to have turned brazenness into an art form. So it’s only after going to court that the Opposition leaders in the state are being allowed to go to Sandeshkhali, even though ministers from the ruling party have free access to the place. The pretext of Section 144 declared in the area does not apply to TMC workers, but applies even to eminent citizens wanting to go to Sandeshkhali. In the latest such show of muscle flexing, the state police detained an independent fact finding team led by a former chief justice of the Patna High Court, L.
Narasimha Reddy, and dragged them to the police headquarters in Kolkata. The media is being persecuted for just doing its job. What explains the arrest of a television journalist, who is now out on bail, or the FIR against a senior journalist, which was quashed by the court? Would any other state government get away with such actions?
The need of the hour is to arrest Shahjahan Sheikh, and fix accountability, which will be the first step towards giving the women of Sandeshkhali a semblance of justice. But at the time of writing, there is no sign of the law catching up with Shahjahan, who has been absconding from the first week of January, after his supporters violently attacked an Enforcement Directorate team that had gone to conduct a raid at his residence in connection with financial crimes. Bengal BJP chief, Suvendu Adhikari has alleged in a tweet on Wednesday that Shahjahan Sheikh is in the “safe custody” of the police “after he managed to negotiate a deal with the Mamata Police, through influential mediators, that he would be taken care of properly while in Police and Judicial Custody”. Whether or not there is any truth to such a claim, will be known only if, and when, Shahjahan’s arrest is made public. However, if there is any truth to such a claim, all may not be fine for the strongman from Sandeshkhali, now that the Kolkata High Court has said that the Central agencies can go ahead and arrest him.
Amidst all this, the role of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is surprising. Above all, Sandeshkhali is a gender issue, and it was expected that it would get a sympathetic ear from a woman Chief Minister, the feisty “Didi”. Everything that her government machinery is doing, the responsibility for that is hers. Sadly, till date, the Chief Minister has not even visited Sandeshkhali, and instead has accused the BJP-RSS of inciting trouble there, even though the protesting women are describing themselves as TMC supporters and workers, with no other party having any foothold in that area. Even the local MP is a woman, TMC’s Nusrat Jahan, a film star. She too is nowhere to be seen near Sandeshkhali. Mamata Banerjee is complaining that her rivals are turning Sandeshkhali into a political issue. But then a seasoned politician like her should have expected it. She herself had turned into a political issue the Nandigram movement against landgrab and murders by the CPM. It eventually paved her way to power. As a smart politician, who has risen from the grassroots, she is supposed to know the pulse of the people. Does she seriously believe that there is no anti-incumbency against her at a time when allegations of corruption against her party colleagues are rampant? Does she believe that her personal popularity and the freebies she gives to Bengal’s population make her invincible, that her party’s misrule is not an issue? That’s what the Left had thought after 35 years of being in power—that they were invincible, until a Mamata Banerjee came along..