West Bengal is burning: Horrific images, videos of violence against women emerged
Mamata Banerjee of the All India Trinamool Congress party, emerged victorious for a third term in the recently concluded elections of West Bengal. Since then the state is going through internal turmoil and volatility. Horrific videos have emerged on social media of women being beaten up by goons.
India Today reported that one of the victims of gang rape in West Bengal had been missing since the incident. The two female election agents were working for the Nanoor BJP candidate Tarakeswar Saha. Several other female BJP workers were molested in 12 villages that fall under the Nanoor Vidhan Sabha constituency.
The Trinamool Congress (TMC) workers appear to have unleashed carnage in West Bengal. Hashtag Bengal Burning is trending on social media for the last few days. Women workers of the opposition party (BJP) are facing the brunt of the TMC goons.
Photos of the mortal remains of a BJP worker who was killed in the violence along with women being beaten on the roads, wards being vandalized, shops being burned in Bara Bazar, and houses of the workers being attacked are readily accessible on social media platforms.
With reports of violence coming from multiple parts of the state, the question of Article 356 is now on the table. While none of the ministers and spokesmen has advocated President’s rule in the state, the constitutional option could be explored to curb the TMC violence suggest SwarajyaMag.
Interestingly, in 2007, Mamata Banerjee demanded the use of Article 356 against the then Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, citing events where the CM’s party was terrorising the state and using government machinery to intimidate and attack the voters. Almost 14 years later, the state finds itself in the same position.
What’s worrying is a pin-drop silence of the media personnel and state machinery. West Bengal is burning, the visuals can send chills down the spine but the center seems to be unaffected. Worse are the unperturbed reactions of people on the killing, vandalism, and rape of BJP workers. If this was not enough, Swapan Dasgupta, the BJP candidate from Tarakeshwar tweeted about 1,000 Hindu families in Birbhum, ready to flee the area because of the carnage by TMC marauders.
The history of politics in Bengal is full of violence. Every regime that governed Bengal came to power stepping on the dead bodies of Hindus. Mamata Banerjee came to power after the Nandigram carnage, where thousands were killed by the Communist regime. In 1972, when Congress won, it had unleashed massive violence on polling day. Telegraph reported, “There was gunfire and bombing. The Congress had taken complete control of the election set-up and was freely rigging the polls,” said Gopal Banerjee, 56, a CPM leader from Baranagar who had accompanied Basu on a round of the constituency as an 18-year-old that day. “Jyotibabu visited a few polling stations and decided to withdraw his candidature. ‘This cannot be tolerated,’ he told us,” Banerjee said.
And who can forget the ghastly Sainbari massacre of 1972? Where a mother was fed rice, soaked in her murdered son’s blood. Nirupam Sen, a known figure of the CPI(M) party, was alleged to have led this massacre.
Coming back to 2021, 12 people have already died in post-poll violence in West Bengal. There is fear and helplessness among the masses. If the center or the state doesn’t stop this rampage now, we may witness a repeat of the 1990 Kashmir exodus.
Chairperson of National Commission for Women Rekha Sharma took cognisance of the increasing crime against women in West Bengal. She has reached Kolkata, the capital of West Bengal and urged the victims of violence or anyone who wants to share grievances related to women to reach her directly either through email: chaiperson-ncw@nic.in or Whatsapp at +91 9811899927.
Prakriti S
