Women supporters hold placards during a public meeting at Rampurhat virtually addressed by TMC National General Secretary Abhishek Banerjee for the Lok Sabha elections, in Birbhum district.
Credit: PTI Photo
Kolkata: The Trinamool Congress has turned the table on the Bharatiya Janata Party, which has been highlighting in its poll campaign across West Bengal the alleged atrocities on the women of Sandeshkhali in the North 24 Parganas district of the state by a local leader of the Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee-led party.
Several videos surfaced on Wednesday and Thursday having women claiming that they had been made to put their signatures on some blank papers, which had later been filled up by a local BJP functionary as complaints of sexual assault against the TMC’s local leaders. The women in the videos alleged that they had been manipulated by the BJP into lodging false complaints of sexual assaults.
Earlier, a video was circulated on Saturday with a man, identified as the BJP’s local ‘Mandal Sabhapati’ Gangadhar Kayal, stating that he and other saffron party workers had made women allege that they had been sexually harassed by Sheikh Shahjahan, a local leader of the TMC, and his aides. It also had Kayal stating that Suvendu Adhikari, a senior leader of the BJP in West Bengal, had encouraged them to make women launch the agitation against the local TMC leaders.
The authenticity of the videos could not be independently verified.
“Please see the true colours of the BJP. For three months, they belittled the people of the state by building a false narrative on Sandeshkhali and brought disgrace to the mothers and sisters of West Bengal by offering Rs 2,000 to a village woman for making false charges against our party and its leaders in the area,” Abhishek Banerjee, the general secretary of TMC, said on Thursday.
Adhikari, the Leader of Opposition in the state assembly, however, dismissed the videos as fake. He alleged that Abhishek, the nephew of the TMC supremo, and the political consultancy firm, I-PAC, had fabricated the videos.
Sheikh Shahjahan was arrested almost two months after the January 5 attack on the Enforcement Directorate officials during a raid at his residence in connection with a case of irregularities in the public distribution system in the state.