Amidst allegations by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leadership that a candidate contesting rural polls was stripped and paraded at Panchala in West Bengal, the State’s Director General of Police Manoj Malaviya on Friday said that police have found no evidence of such a crime.
“There is no evidence indicating any such incident. We have called on the victim to produce the injury report and record a statement before a Court under Section 164 of (Cr.PC) however they are yet to come forward,” Mr. Malaviya said.
No report of an incident
The DGP said a complaint was received on July 13 over email and an FIR was registered on July 14. Mr. Malaviya said that nobody had seen the incident and the central forces deployed during the panchayat polls have not reported any incident to the police.
BJP leaders Amit Malviya and Hooghly BJP MP Locket Chatterjee raised the issue. “On 8th Jul 2023, during the Panchayat poll, a Gram Sabha candidate, a woman, was beaten, stripped naked and paraded in Howrah’s Panchla, stone’s throw away from Nabanno, where you sit. Your police wasn’t even taking FIR till the BJP forced you,” Mr. Malviya had tweeted on Thursday.
On Friday, Ms. Chatterjee during a press conference broke down while recounting allegations that a woman candidate at Panchla was sexually assaulted. “A zilla parishad candidate was dragged by her hair. I could not do anything…At Amta, the house of a worker was burnt,” she said.
Fact-finding team
The DGP added that the Leader of Opposition of West Bengal and a fact-finding team of the BJP which visited Howrah have not informed the police of any incident.
The allegations come as the Trinamool Congress leadership including Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee are raising the issue of visuals of women being paraded naked in strife-ridden Manipur. They were also sexually assaulted. “The Opposition is trying to rake up an incident in Manipur which is very sad. But what of the incident in South Panchala wher a BJP worker was stripped and paraded for participating in rural polls. The only difference is that we don’t have videos of the incident in Panchla,” State BJP president Sukanta Majumdar said.
There were widespread allegations of violence and electoral malpractice during the recently concluded panchayat polls. More than 50 people lost their livess. The Chief Minister put the casualty figure at 29.
