Kolkata student 'gang-rape' case | Political slugfest begins between TMC, BJP even as fourth arrest made

The BJP’s protest march in Kolkata was also stopped by the city cops, who detained the BJP state president Sukanta Majumdar.

Kolkata: The Kolkata Police on Saturday arrested the fourth man – a security guard – in connection with the recent alleged gangrape of a woman at a law college in the city, even as the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party took to the streets to take on the ruling Trinamool Congress over the incident.

The BJP’s protest march in the city was stopped by the police personnel, who detained the president of the saffron party’s state unit, Sukanta Majumdar, the Union Minister of State for Education, along with other leaders of the party.

The police earlier arrested three men whom the victim accused of raping her at the South Calcutta Law College in the city on June 25 evening. The security guard was arrested on Saturday in view of inconsistencies in his replies during questioning by the investigators and the allegation of the victim that he had not helped her, according to a senior police officer. The victim alleged that she had been taken to the guard room and raped after she turned down the marriage proposal of the prime accused.

Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s government constituted a Special Investigation Team led by an Assistant Commissioner of Police to probe the allegation of gangrape, which came less than a year after protest against the rape and a murder of a young doctor at the R G Kar Medical College and Hospital in Kolkata on August 9, 2024, had swept West Bengal, putting the ruling TMC in a tight spot.

The allegation of gangrape by the student at the South Calcutta Law College too embarrassed the TMC, with the BJP highlighting the links of the prime accused with the Trinamool Congress Chhatra Parishad, the student wing of the ruling party. The TMC, however, said that the accused had no connection with any wing of the party since 2021. He had passed out of the college in 2022 and started practising as a lawyer.

The victim has also been a supporter of the TMC and involved with its student wing’s unit in the South Calcutta Law College.

With the assembly elections in West Bengal less than a year away, not only the main BJP, the main opposition party in the state assembly, but also the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the Congress, which do not have any legislators in the state, took to the streets to protest the gangrape. The civil society activists, who had launched the ‘reclaim the night’ agitation after the rape and murder of the doctor last year, also called for a renewed protest in the wake of the alleged gangrape of the law student.

“We were here to protest against the rising number of crimes against women in West Bengal. The chief minister, who also holds the home portfolio, must take responsibility for the incident of gang rape at the law college,” Majumdar said after the police detained him and other BJP leaders and stopped the protest march took out by the saffron party from proceeding towards the South Calcutta Law College – the scene of the alleged gangrape.

The BJP national president, J P Nadda, constituted a team comprising four party leaders and assigned it to visit Kolkata to enquire about the incident of gang-rape and submit a report to the central leadership of the party.

“A woman’s body is not your political battlefield,” TMC leader Shashi Panja, who is also the minister of women and child development in the West Bengal government, said, hitting out at the BJP for trying to take advantage of the “heinous crime”. The TMC government in West Bengal has a policy of zero tolerance against such crimes against women, she said, pointing out that the police had arrested three accused immediately after the victim lodged the complaint and followed it up with the arrest of the fourth person on Saturday.

The BJP, however, refrained from demanding a probe by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which had probed the rape and murder of the young doctor last year, but had failed to find any evidence of the involvement of any other person in the crime, apart from Sanjay Roy who had been arrested by the Kolkata Police just a few hours after the body of the medic had been found. The saffron party had accused the Kolkata Police of tampering with evidence before the CBI had taken over the probe.

“If we demand a CBI investigation now, the police may again destroy evidence (as they had done in the case at R G Kar Medical College and Hospital last year,” Agnimitra Paul, a BJP member in the state assembly, said.

“Let the state police personnel, who draw salaries from taxpayers' money, investigate the case and take full responsibility”.