💪 Another rape rocks Kolkata. But politicians are busy playing their usual gameAnother rape in Kolkata, but the politicians are busy scoring points. Meanwhile, prime accused Monojit Mishra seems to have had a sense of impunity in carrying on with his reported reign of terror.
Another day another rape and, of course, political points are flying fast and thick. Yet again, the BJP says West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee must resign. Yet again, Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress (TMC) is running its own little side-show for stupidest statement. In the running so far:
There are denials and retractions. But there is no boxing back the misogyny. Kalyan Banerjee is wrong. It is precisely the job of the college to provide a safe space to all students from friends and strangers. It is most certainly the job of the state to ensure women are safe everywhere, in the college where she studies or hospital where she works. Is Madan Mitra suggesting that women should be locked up at home after hours? Maybe he doesn’t know that one in three women is subject to violence from her own family. Perhaps Manas Bhunia has normalized rape as a ‘small incident’ in a country where 86 cases are reported every day. These are very much India’s shame; a key reason why the US state department recently issued a warning to single women against travelling to India. Not one to shy away from battle, Mahua Moitra takes the high moral ground saying misogyny cuts across party lines: “We condemn these disgusting comments no matter who makes them,” she tweets. Moitra has a bit of a history of bad blood with Kalyan Banerjee who then crosses a line by making needless personal comments about her (proving, ironically, her point about misogyny) and an unseemly war of words breaks out. Rape, horror and impunityCutting through the noise, this is what we have. On June 25, a 24-year-old first-year law student at the South Calcutta law college was gang-raped within the college premises. Her medical report reveals forceful penetration, bite marks and nail scratches. She was beaten with a hockey stick, filmed naked and threatened with the release of the video if she complained. She filed a police complaint anyway.
There have been four arrests so far: Security guard Pinaki Banerjee and two students, Promit Mukherjee and Zaid Ahmed, as well as the prime accused Monojit Mishra, a lawyer who is an alumnus of the same college and an ad-hoc staff member. The rape is said to have been planned by Mishra as a ‘lesson’ to the student for rebuffing his advances. Mishra was admitted to the college in 2012, expelled a year later for criminal activity but somehow made his way back in 2017. In 2021 he was thrown out of the college’s TMC student unit where he was an office bearer. A year later he managed to graduate. Details of Mishra’s early criminal career include reportedly 11 cases against him, including attempt to murder, sexual assault and extortion as well as at least three prior arrests, the most recent in April or May this year. In 2022, another first-year student filed a police complaint against him for sexual harassment. Nothing happened. As Joydeep Thakur reports for HT, so powerful was Mishra that administrators at the law college last year issued a notice informing students that he was their points man for atheir queries. What is the source of Monojit Mishra’s clout? How did a man with his record and reputation manage a job, even an ad-hoc one, in an educational institution? Where did he get the confidence to continue his free run as college goonda and serial sexual assaulter? And if this is not systemic failure, then what is? In a state where student union elections have been suspended in most colleges across the state for over a decade, “political proxies often fill the vacuum. These unelected groups, backed by ruling-party networks, consolidate informal authority without accountability,” writes political science anthropologist and college lecturer Suman Nath in The Indian Express. “This dynamic is especially dangerous in institutions of higher learning, where dissent, student safety, and democratic governance are critical.” More chilling is the fact that police have now urged “other women who may have faced similar harassment and molestation to step forward and lodge complaints.” Political clout and impunity
There’s a chilling but undeniable link between political influence that cuts across party lines and cases of sexual assault. In West Bengal itself, Sheikh Shahjahan, a strongman from Sandeshkhali used his TMC links to run a reign of terror for years. In early 2024, several women came forward and spoke about how Shahjahan and his henchmen were able to operate with impunity thanks to political patronage and police complicity. Despite the political heat raised by opposition parties in an election year as well as pressure from the Calcutta high court, it still took 55 days to finally arrest Shahjahan on February 29. A horror story was emerging in Karnataka too where days before the elections, hundreds of pen drives featuring Prajwal Revanna, a sitting member of Parliament and grandson of former prime minister H D Deve Gowda, were circulated. Revanna is alleged to have sexually assaulted and filmed dozens of women. Revanna’s party, the Janata Dal (Secular) is an ally of the BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi had personally campaigned for him. Revanna ran off to Germany but was arrested on his eventual return and remains in jail. The hall of shame includes Kuldeep Singh Senger, BJP legislator from Uttar Pradesh accused in the rape of a minor girl. During trial, key witnesses died in mysterious circumstances—the girl’s father in police custody and aunts when their car collided with a truck. Senger’s conviction and sentencing to life imprisonment is a rare aberration in the quest for justice by rape survivors against the powerful and connected. In 2021, the court acquitted Chinmayanand, a former BJP union minister, of rape charges brought against him by a law student. The court noted that the victim had turned hostile taking back her previous statements stating that she had made them under pressure. A rapist knows no geography, religion or caste. But when he comes armed with political clout, he has reason to believe he is above justice and can commit the crime with impunity. And when other politicians base their response and outrage on ideology, they only serve to feed this sense of impunity. Monojit Mishra presided over a reign of fear and terror. There are news reports of women students choosing to miss classes rather than run into him. The co-opting of a security guard and other students in the rape of a student points clearly to institutional collusion and failure. The question to ask: What gave him the confidence to believe he could get away? If justice is to be served, then that question must be answered. In numbers75%Nearly 75% of lawmakers today are men and 103 countries have never had a woman head of state. Source: UNWomen, Women Political Leaders 2025 Going places
Sana Atef, a Zan Times journalist who reports under a pseudonym for personal safety from southern Afghanistan has been named a recipient of the International Women’s Media Foundation Courage in Journalism award for 2005. “Over the past three years, we’ve endured days so bitter that only we can fully understand them, days of emotional exhaustion, hopelessness, and fear. Yet we stood tall. We wrote. We became a voice,” she said after the award was announced. Can’t make this s*** up
As ideas go, who can argue with the distribution of free sanitary napkins to 500,000 women in poll-bound Bihar as part of the Congress party’s outreach programme? But then some wise guy decided to emblazon Congress member of Parliament Rahul Gandhi’s photograph on the packets. Umm, why? The National Democratic Alliance has, predictably, raised a stink saying the Congress has “insulted the dignity of women”. News you may have missedThe Andhra Pradesh high court has ruled that Indian law cannot deny transgender women recognition as women only because they cannot bear children. The landmark decision by justice Venkata Jyothirmai Pratapa will enable trans women to access the same protections guaranteed to cisgender women such as section 498A. The case was brought to the court by Shabana, a trans woman who sought legal protection against domestic violence. While the case was initially registered at the Ongole women’s police station, her husband and his family argued that Shabana was not legally a ‘woman’ since she could not conceive children. The high court disagreed, and made history. More here.
A decision to introduce Zumba classes in 14,000 state-run schools in Kerala has managed to offend Muslim religious groups including the Samastha Kerala Jamiyyathul Ulema, an influential organisation of clerics, on the grounds of ‘morality’. “Zumba dancing is against moral values,” Abdussamad Pookkottur, Samastha state secretary wrote in a Facebook post. The state government has said it will not roll back the programme. Medicine’s gender bias can be seen in the different effect of antidepressants on the male and female brain—at least in rats. While tablets like Prozac, Fludac and Sarfem had a strong impact on the brains of male rats, they do not affect the brains of female rats as much, a new study has shown. More by Sandhya Ramesh here. The husband and in-laws of a 27-year-old woman have been arrested in Tamil Nadu’s Tiruppur after the newly married woman died by suicide. The woman brought a dowry of luxury car and 300 gold sovereigns that fell short of the anticipated 500 leading Kavin Kumar and his family to abuse his wife. Tragically, the woman left seven WhatsApp messages sent to her father telling him of her ordeal. Reportedly she had even returned home 15 days into her marriage but was told by her father to ‘adjust’. News from elsewhere
Sean “Diddy” Combs has been acquitted of serious sex-trafficking and racketeering conspiracy charges that could have resulted in a life sentence. However, the Manhattan jury, found him guilty of two other prostitution-related charges. The eight-week trial included distressing testimony from two previous girlfriends who spoke of how he used his power and physical force to manipulate them into drug-fueled sex marathons and humiliating acts with male sex workers. Combs has been denied bail as he awaits sentencing. His lawyers described the verdict as ‘victory’.
Thailand’s constitutional court has suspended prime minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra while it investigates ethical violations relating to a leaked phone call with Cambodia’s former leader Hun Sen, in which the 38-year-old allegedly discussed a border dispute between the two countries and called Hun Sen ‘uncle’. She is also heard telling him that if there was anything he wanted she would ‘take care of it’. The leaked phone recording caused outrage in Thailand.
And the UEFA Women’s Euro 2025 officially kicked off on July 2 in Switzerland with 550,000 tickets already sold. Germany’s Jule Brand scored the opening goal and set up the other to lead a 2-0 win over Poland. And England Lionesses began their title defence. Stay tuned. That’s it for this week. If you have a tip, feedback, criticism, please write to me at: namita.bhandare@gmail.com, or reply to this mail. Edited and produced by Shashwat Mohanty.
|
