Bilkis Bano case: TMC to organise two-day protest in Kolkata to seek re-arrest of convicts

The Trinamool Congress will organise a two-day agitation in Kolkata to demand that the convicts in the Bilkis Bano case should be re-arrested, party chief Mamata Banerjee said on Monday.

Addressing a rally of the party’s student wing, the West Bengal chief minister said that the Trinamool Congress will organise a 48-hour agitation near the Mahatma Gandhi statue in the city to seek the intervention of the Supreme Court in the case.

“The BJP talks about ‘Beti Bachao’ and ‘Beti Padhao’ and its government released those involved in Bilkis Bano case,” Banerjee said, according to PTI. “Is this justice?”

On August 15, eleven persons convicted for gangraping Bilkis Bano were released from a Godhra jail after the Gujarat government approved their application under its remission policy. On the same day, the convicts were greeted with sweets by their relatives after their release. A member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh felicitated them as well.

The 11 men had gangraped Bano in a village near Ahmedabad on March 3, 2002, during the riots in Gujarat. She was 19 and pregnant at the time. Fourteen members of her family were also killed in the violence, including her three-year-old daughter whose head was smashed on the ground by the perpetrators.

‘BJP using agencies to dislodge state governments’: Mamata

At the rally on Monday, Banerjee accused the Bharatiya Janata Party of using central agencies and “ill-gotten money” to dislodge state governments run by other political parties, PTI reported.

She alleged that a malicious campaign had been unleashed against her as well as other senior leaders of her party such as Abhishek Banerjee and Firhad Hakim.

“The BJP is branding everybody as thieves,” Banerjee said. “They are campaigning in a way as if all of us in the TMC are thieves and only the BJP and its leaders are holy. Had I not been in politics, I would have torn out their tongues.”

The Trinamool Congress chief also said that an alleged corruption case involving former party leader Partha Chatterjee is sub-judice and nothing has been proven yet, ANI reported.

“Media trial is going on,” she said. “BJP is scaring media, judiciary, political parties, using Pegasus to take away people’s freedom, using ED [Enforcement Directorate] and CBI [Central Bureau of Investigation] to loot money from people’s houses.”

Chatterjee was the state education minister in 2018 when allegedly jobs were given to candidates in return for money instead of deserving candidates who had qualified in the recruitment process.

The Enforcement Directorate has claimed that it has seized Rs 49.80 crore in cash, jewellery and gold bars from apartments owned by his aide Arpita Mukherjee, besides documents of properties and a company in joint holding.

On July 28, Chatterjee was stripped of his party and ministerial responsibilities after he was arrested in the case.