WB rape: Intellectuals, who supported Mamata Banerjee to oust Left, lose faith in her now

KOLKATA: Prominent intellectuals, who helped Mamata Banerjee to oust the Marxists from power in 2011, are now disillusioned and have lost confidence on the chief minister. They are upset with Mamata for her government’s failures to control crimes against women and feels that being the first woman chief minister of Bengal, she should handle such cases more sensibly and seriously.

Recent death of a 16-year-old girl has raised the issue about women’s security once more and all of Mamata’s old friends are displeased with her for the death of the girl. But, this intellectual class is also unhappy with other parties, who according to them are trying to extract mileage out of this incidence before lok sabha polls.

However, they are also not sparing Mamata Banerjee for making similar effort. These intellectuals, are, however, divided on the issue of Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar’s act of sending a senior police official in West Bengal to meet the victim’s family. While all these intellectuals have condemned equivocal the incident of rape and subsequent death of the girl, some of them feel that Nitish Kumar was wrong in sending his official to Kolkata without consulting Mamata’s government.

Some feel that instead of attempting to shirk responsibilities, Mamata should identify the police officials who had failed to give protection to the girl despite her family’s repeated pleas. “This is a very tragic incident. The girl was raped by someone. She and her family had lodged FIR with the Madhyamgram police station. When the family was returning after filing the FIR, the girl was kidnapped by the same miscreants who inflicted physical torture on her again and dumped her near a railway station. The family didn’t find safety despite repeated appeal to the police for protection. I really don’t understand what the police was doing. Why not the state administration identify those police officials and punish them for their failure to protect the family. I feel Mamata’s government should hold a probe on the police’s role. It can’t blame common people and social workers for protesting against the death,” said Bivas Chakraborty, a noted theatre personality, who supported Mamata Banerjee in her movement in Singur and Nandigram. Actor and theatre personality Kaushik Sen has also criticised Trinamool-run government.

“This government has a very bad tendency of admitting it’s failures. In this case, it is now being said that forensic experts were not consulted. How can the police ignore forensic experts while handling a death case in which the victim has died of burn injuries?”asked Sen.