West Bengal Assembly Elections 2026 | BJP fields mother of RG Kar rape-murder victim from Panihati seat

Kolkata: One-and-half-years after the rape and murder of a young doctor in a hospital in Kolkata sparked off protests across West Bengal, the Bharatiya Janata Party on Wednesday declared Ratna Debnath, the mother of the victim, to be one of its candidates for the state assembly elections.

Debnath will contest in her home constituency, Panihati, on the outskirts of Kolkata, as the BJP’s candidate against Tirthankar Ghosh of the ruling Trinamool Congress. Tirthankar’s father, Nirmal Ghosh, was the legislator from the constituency in the outgoing state assembly.

The BJP’s move to field the mother of the victim of a brutal rape and murder is apparently intended to reap the political dividends of the widespread outrage which had swept the state in the wake of the incident on August 9, 2024.

“If I win and work for the people of the constituency, my daughter’s soul will be happy,” Debnath said after the BJP formally announced her candidature on Wednesday. The party also declared candidates for 18 more constituencies in the state, leaving 19 more to be announced later. “Let the lotus bloom across West Bengal, and the Trinamool Congress be uprooted from the state.”

Apart from Tirthankar, Debnath will contest against Kalatan Dasgupta of the Communist Party of India (Marxist). Kalatan had been arrested by the Kolkata Police during the widespread protests against the rape and murder of the young doctor. Though the protest against the rape and murder was largely apolitical, the leftist organisations had played a key role in organising the agitation, which continued for several weeks, posing a formidable challenge to Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s government and the Trinamool Congress.

Debnath’s daughter, a postgraduate trainee doctor at the R G Kar Medical College and Hospital, run by the West Bengal government, had been brutally raped and murdered in the hospital early on August 9, 2024. The incident triggered outrage across the state and brought large-scale corruption in the institution, as well as other healthcare facilities run by the state government, under public scrutiny. The BJP did take to the streets over the rape and murder of the doctor, but could not take as prominent a role as the leftists had.

The CPI(M) and other leftist parties took to the streets in the wake of the rape and murder of the young doctor. They also extended support and often allegedly played a behind-the-scenes role in organising protests by the junior doctors, theatre and film personalities, as well as the civil society activists, not only against the brutal crime but also against corruption in the public healthcare sector of the state. The parents of the victim had sought an investigation by the Central Bureau of Investigation. But the CBI probe could not find any other accused other than Sanjay Roy, whom the Kolkata Police had arrested just a day after the body of the doctor had been found. He was sentenced to life imprisonment later.

But Debnath and her husband remained unconvinced about the outcome of the investigation, both by the Kolkata Police and the CBI.