West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s remarks on the alleged gang-rape and murder of a minor in Nadia’s Hanskhali have sparked a lot of controversy, even as the Calcutta High Court on Tuesday handed over to the CBI the investigation into the rape-murder case. The order was passed by the chief justice’s division bench. The court asked the CBI to submit its preliminary investigation report on 2 May. Reacting to Banerjee’s remarks, 2012 Delhi gang-rape victim Nirbhaya’s mother Ashadevi criticized the comments and said that Mamata Banerjee had made extremely “insensitive” remarks and such remarks are not expected from the Chief
Minister. “If Mamata is so insensitive to rape, the post of Chief Minister is not for her. If she has this attitude towards torture, then she should not be the chief minister,” Ashadevi said. “As a woman, making such remarks does not fit her position,” she added.
Reacting to an alleged gang-rape at Hanskhali, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had questioned that when the incident took place allegedly on 5 April, why was there a delay in lodging a complaint till 10 April. She also raised questions about why the political identity of the accused’s father was being magnified. CM Banerjee had asked: “Was she raped or was she pregnant as a result of a love affair? Did you enquire about it, I asked the police. The situation is bad. Arrests have also been made. But the girl was in love with the boy.” This is not the first time that there has been a controversy over remarks made by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee in the wake of allegations of rape. She had called the 2012 Park Street gang-rape incident a “minor incident”, although the then Detective Chief of Calcutta Police Damayanti Sen had made it clear that gang-rape had taken place. At that time, there was a lot of confusion over the remarks of the Chief Minister. Damayanti Sen had to be removed from the post of intelligence chief. Coincidentally, a decade after that incident, the Calcutta High Court on Tuesday handed over the responsibility of overseeing the investigation into the four rape cases in the state to Damayanti. However, the Hanskhali case is not among the four rape cases.
Meanwhile, the Opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has condemned the Chief Minister’s remarks over the alleged gang rape case.