While BJP has been making Sandeshkhali incident of sexual exploitation and land grabbing by a local TMC leader as a major political issue in West Bengal to grab majority of Lok Sabha seats in the state, chief minister and TMC chief Mamata Banerjee in a sensational revelation accused that the incident was `scripted by BJP’.
Moreover, TMC is attempting to push BJP into defence by questioning the party’s silence over a women’s allegation of sexual molestation against Governor C V Ananda Bose. Mamata asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi why he was silent on this issue.
“The entire Sandeshkhali incident was preplanned. The BJP had scripted it well. The truth has been exposed. I have been saying this for a long time,” Banerjee said at an election rally in Chakdah in Nadia district. “I have not seen the entire video. I will definitely see it,” she added.
Mamata wondered “PM Modi gave sandesh (messages) regarding Sandeshkhali, but remained silent on the representative of the Centre, the governor’s sexual molestation issue.”
On Saturday, the Trinamool Congress (TMC) released a video on social media, claiming that the Sandeshkhali episode was a “conspiracy” by the BJP to defame West Bengal in the run-up to the ongoing Lok Sabha election.
The 32-minute video, which the party claims was a ‘sting operation’, appears to show BJP worker Gangadhar Koyal, the block president of Sandeshkhali Block II, who is heard saying “there wasn’t any rape of women but it was framed as such”.
In the video, the man resembling Koyal is also heard saying that the entire incident was organised by state BJP chief Suvendu Adhikari (who was earlier Banerjee’s deputy in the TMC before switching sides), and that his personal assistant had visited the place.
“We couldn’t ask our wives to do this (make false rape claims), but dada managed everything from outside. He convinced the women. And I got the rape complaints done,” he added.
It may be recalled that trouble erupted in the Sandeshkhali area of North 24 Parganas district in the first week of February, when villages began witnessing protests over allegations of sexual atrocities against women and land grabbing by local TMC leaders, particularly Sheikh Shahjahan, who was subsequently arrested and suspended from the party for six years.
