Mamata Banerjee Breaks Silence on Sandeshkhali Turmoil, Orders Action Amidst Allegations of Trinamul's Reign of Terror

On Monday, Mamata Banerjee broke her silence in public over the unrest in Sandeshkhali and arranged for a team from the state women's commission to visit the area where women have been demonstrating against Trinamul's purported reign of terror.

"I dispatched a team from the state women's commission there. I have received a report from them. "Those who are suspected of inciting violence there have already been arrested by police," the chief minister said at a helipad in Dumurjala, Howrah.


She said, "You have seen that the police arrested those who incited violence and with whom the local people were angry," before taking off to travel to Arambagh, Hooghly, to attend an important function.

A crowd assaulted an Enforcement Directorate team in Sandeshkhali, a region of North 24-Parganas, early in January while they were attempting to search the residence of Trinamul leader Sheikh Shahjahan. Since then, the leader of the Trinamul party has gone into hiding.

Women in Sandeshkhali have been protesting since last week, accusing local Trinamul officials who support Shahjahan of sexually harassing them. The first protests were met with violence by the crowd.

On the same day that Governor C.V. Ananda Bose visited Sandeshkhali, Mamata made a speech that seemed to be an effort to refute the BJP's claim that women were becoming endangered in Bengal due to deteriorating law and order.

According to a Trinamul source, Mamata and the party's all-India general secretary, Abhishek Banerjee, had held lengthy discussions over the Sandeshkhali events, which they acknowledged were embarrassing for the party.

We started doing damage control a little after noon. Following Didi and Abhishek's discussion, the government moved quickly to make arrests. The main point of Didi's remarks today, according to the source, was that the state administration is carrying out its responsibility.

In an attempt to retake control of the law and order in the region, the police have detained three local leaders from the CPM, BJP, and Trinamul during the last three days.

However, the arrest of Trinamul leader Uttam Sardar, who the party had suspended for six years, and his subsequent release from a Basirhat court dealt a blow to the governing party's narrative about the government doing its share, since the police had not requested his imprisonment.

After an uproar from the opposition, he was subsequently detained again in a different Sandeshkhali case.

Bikash Sinha, the district coordinator for the BJP in Basirhat, who had been detained on suspicion of inciting unrest, was granted bail as well, but he was also taken into custody again in a different Sandeshkhali case. Nirapada Sardar, a former lawmaker for the CPM, is still being held.

The BJP and the CPM both said that the police were abusing their party representatives in order to protect Trinamul thugs.

The state women's commission sent a two-person team, headed by chairman Leena Gangopadhyay, to Sandeshkhali on Mamata's orders. The ladies who were protesting accused Shahjahan and his cronies of abusing and harassing them sexually.

We had private conversations with around fifty ladies and recorded their accounts. To find out whether any of the accusations are accurate, we will double-check them," Gangopadhyay said.

According to a source, the committee said in its main report that no specific complaints of rape or sexual harassment had been made up to this point.

According to a another source, Mamata instructed the police to identify any potential victims of the alleged sexual harassment and file a lawsuit against the perpetrators.

A police team has been established to tour different villages and gather complaints, according to Sumit Kumar, DIG of Barasat, whose jurisdiction includes Sandeshkhali, who spoke to press.

"So far, we have had four complaints. But there hasn't been a rape allegation, according to Kumar.

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