Bengal Polls: Why RG Kar Rape Victim's Mother Seeking BJP Ticket Has Ignited Row

(This story was first published on 23 March and has been republished with updates on March 29 as Panihati Assembly seat goes to polls amid second and final phase of West Bengal polls. The story contains descriptions of sexual violence, reader descretion is adviced.)When she heard the news about Abhaya's mother Ratna Debnath seeking a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ticket to contest the upcoming Assembly elections in West Bengal, Barasat University student and women's rights activist Neha Chakraborty's first reaction was that of utter shock, followed by sheer disappointment. And a personal sense of betrayal. On 5 September 2024, Neha and her friends were beaten, harassed, and locked up by the police, simply for standing up against the rape and murder of the young trainee doctor at RG Kar Medical College and Hospital. The demonstrations at Colony More that night had been part of the "Reclaim the Night" movement that spread across the state soon after the discovery of the crime 9 August 2024."At least 18 of us, including five women, were booked under multiple charges such as rioting, even attempt to murder. While we received bail, the case is still on and continues to impact our professional and personal lives."Neha Chakraborty"Our fight was not just for Abhaya (fearless, the moniker given to the victim). We endured all that because we were fighting for the rights and safety of working women and students everywhere. And we all know the BJP's track record when it comes to gender violence in other states," Neha tells The Quint. RG Kar Case Verdict: Accused Held Guilty But Victims' Parents Seek 'Full Truth'Days after the Election Commission of India announced the election dates, to be held in two phases in April, reports emerged about Abhaya's mother announcing her decision to contest the elections from Panihati on a BJP ticket.In an interview to regional media outlet Inscript.me, the mother said that she did not want to remain hidden from view anymore. She also told media that she "wanted to join the BJP so that she could uproot the Trinamool Congress (TMC), which has failed to bring justice for Abhaya, despite the protracted protests and movement."Abhaya's family confirmed to The Quint that she indeed has decided to contest the elections and had been in talks with the party for the same as, "only by being in power can one hold others in power accountable for their wrongs". Ahead of polls, Prime Minister Narendra Modi also campaigned for Debnath, appearing beside her on stage and blessing her as she broke down in tears. And yet, on 29 April when Panihati went to polls, Debnath was met with chants of protesters as she arrived at a polling booth to cast her vote.The question on the minds of many, including those associated with the movement like Neha, remains: why the BJP?After all, it was the Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)] which had been the instrumental political force behind the RG Kar movement. The CPI(M) leaders like Meenakshi Mukherjee and other Left activists had been key in the case, whose interventions led to the discovery of the incident and the victim's body. They have been shrill critics of the TMC's handling of the investigation, the irregularities over evidence and process, and so on.Speaking to the media, the mother said that the Left groups had used Abhaya's case for its own political gains. CPI(M) leader Shatarup Ghosh told The Quint that the mother's statements were "that of a BJP candidate, not the mother of a victim.""When the CPI(M) started this fight, there was no political agenda but to get justice for Abhaya and reveal the rampant doorneeti (misgovernance) of the ruling government. Our leaders have actively tried to secure justice for the victim by pressurising the government to take action. There were no ulterior motives."Shatarup GhoshWhen asked why the CPI(M) had failed to gain electoral brownie points for their role in the campaign, Ghosh said, "This is the first election to be held since the protests. Whether it has an electoral impact is yet to be seen."The CPI(M) has fielded leader Kalatan Dasgupta, who was among two persons arrested for allegedly hatching a conspiracy to attack the protesting junior doctors in a bid to defame Mamata Banerjee, an allegation the party has squarely refuted as "false charge".According to sources, the CPI(M) candidate had told reporters after Debnath declared her candidacy that CPI(M) would have happily stepped back and supported the mother, had she contested independently.Decoding TMC’s Campus Grip: No Elections, No Accountability, Just ControlDebnath's ticket from Panihati would fit in neatly with the BJP's peg of women's safety, which it has somewhat successfully mobilised against the TMC.Starting with alleged mass rapes in Sandeshkhali to the RG Kar issue, the party has managed to pitch the party under the leadership of Mamata Banerjee as a "party of rapists". The narrative seems to have percolated down to certain sections of voters who were anyway leaning toward BJP or given to anti-incumbency. Tuka Mondal, a domestic worker from Kolkata, for instance, states that though she has always voted for Didi in the past, this time she will vote for the BJP. "How can I vote for a party that fails to protect its women? The TMC is a rapist party. The BJP will protect women," she says.Nevertheless, for the women involved closely with the movement, the developments have brought a sense of despair and irony. "We are feeling a strange paradox. Watching Abhaya’s mother join the BJP in the name of 'women’s safety' is so ironic that I don’t know how to accept this," Kolkata-based martial artist Roudri Bagchi, who had also participated in the protests, tells The Quint.Bagchi adds that she was not a "political" person before "Reclaim the Nights" protests, but the incident scared her enough to act. "What drove me to protest was the fact that if I didn't, my state would soon become like BJP-ruled states, where rape is normalised, and the government becomes increasingly blase," she says.Madhubanti Mitra, an Assistant Professor at Kolkata's Swami Vivekanda University, who was also closely associated with the movement, echoes these sentiments."We all knew that it was not going to be easy to get justice...we could see the investigation getting botched up from the start, and no one was quite convinced with the verdict. But, while this development is disappointing, the movement will go on in its path. One stakeholder straying off path canont affect the movement. "Madhubanti MitraIndrani Chankrabarty, Professor, Head of Department (English Literature) Prabhu Jagadbandhu College, however, tells The Quint that the betrayal that the protesters have been feeling is not a comment on the victim's mother."Humans have not been designed to be able to bear the kind of grief that she went through, and it is thus not my place to comment on her decisions. But it is a mistake to trust that the BJP, which garlands rapists and justifies victim-shaming in the states it rules, would bring justice or closure for victims of gender-based violence."Theatre artist and member of the protesting doctors body, West Bengal West Bengal Junior Doctors Front, Subhadeep Dey agreed that the mother could not be blamed for her choices. But what hurt more were her statements discrediting the movement. "They said everybody had a secret motive to participate in this movement but in reality, we have seen people live on the streets for days. People with disabilities were sitting in dharnas on their wheelchairs, working professionals did their jobs in the morning and sat on the streets through the night. I don’t think they had any ulterior motives other than getting justice for that girl."A senior journalist who reports on politics in West Bengal, however, says (while requesting anonimity) that the ticket controversy and the larger issue of sexual violence may become an emotive plank for the Opposition, but it is unlikely to dent electoral results in Panihati or elsewhere. "It is true that there is widespread discontent across the state over the TMC's handling of the RG Kar case, and the memories of the movement are still fresh. Even though the accused has been held guilty, there is sense of total justice not being done. The BJP is likely to milk this dissonance, especially now with all the brouhaha over voter roll revisions."A senior journalistThe scribe points out that it would nevertheless be wrong to assume this issue on its own would convert any real votes for them. Those who endorse the BJP's stance on rape usually tend to endorse the party's other views as well, meaning they are already its voters."(With additional reporting inputs from Kolkata-based independent researcher Soumo Mondal.)

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Why RG Kar Rape Victim's Mother Fighting Bengal Polls for BJP Has Raised a Row

The question on the minds of many, including those associated with the movement remains: why the BJP?

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