One of many three girls from West Bengal’s Sandeshkhali village who had accused functionaries of the Trinamool Congress of rape withdrew her criticism on Wednesday, The Instances of India reported.
The lady said that the rape criticism was false. She additionally filed one other criticism on the Sandeshkhali police station, claiming that she had been threatened after her choice to withdraw the criticism, the newspaper reported.
She alleged {that a} employee from the Bharatiya Janata Celebration’s girls’s wing and different celebration staff had visited her house and compelled her to signal a clean paper.
“They requested for my signature on the pretext of enlisting my title for PMAY [Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana scheme],” the girl stated. “Later, they took me to the police station to lodge a criticism of sexual abuse.”
The lady additionally claimed that the neighborhood had ostracised her on the behest of the BJP staff. “We’re feeling unsafe, and I’ve sought police assist,” she stated.
The BJP girls’s wing employee in query, nonetheless, stated the complainant was the spouse of a Trinamool Congress functionary and was performing on instructions from the ruling celebration within the state.
“No person compelled her to file a criticism,” The Instances of India quoted the BJP girls’s wing member as saying. “She and different girls themselves narrated their plight to Nationwide Fee for Ladies Chairperson Rekha Sharma. The reality will come out when the CCTV footage from contained in the police station is launched.”
The BJP member additionally accused the complainant and her husband of siphoning cash from the reduction funds allotted for the state after cyclones Amphan in 2020 and Bulbul in 2019.
On Saturday, the Trinamool Congress launched a video purportedly exhibiting a BJP chief alleging that the sexual harassment complaints in opposition to the Trinamool Congress functionaries had been filed on the behest of Suvendu Adhikari, a frontrunner of the Hindutva celebration.
Within the video, BJP’s Sandeshkhali unit chief Gangadhar Kayl, or Koyal, will be heard saying: “We acquired it accomplished [complaints of sexual harassment in Sandeshkhali] as per directions of Suvendu da [Suvendu Adhikari], he helped us. Suvendu da stated if you don’t do that, then you wouldn’t have the ability to get the sturdy folks arrested and maintain your self.”
On Thursday, the Trinamool Congress filed a criticism with the Election Fee in opposition to Adhikari and others in reference to the video, PTI reported quoting celebration staff.
The celebration informed the ballot panel that Adhikari had “confessed” on digicam that the allegations of sexual abuse in Sandeshkhali had been false.
Sandeshkhali case
In early January, the Enforcement Directorate officers had been allegedly attacked at Sandeshkhali within the state’s North 24 Parganas district after they had been finishing up raids on the home of now-suspended Trinamool Congress chief Shahjahan Sheikh in reference to an alleged ration distribution rip-off.
A mob had allegedly attacked the Enforcement Directorate officers with stones, bricks and batons.
Following this, a number of native girls had accused Sheikh and his associates, Shiba Prasad Hazra and Uttam Sardar, of torturing and sexually harassing them over a number of years and in addition of grabbing their lands for prawn cultivation.
The ladies had held protests demanding that the three males be arrested. They alleged that Sheikh and his associates used to survey properties to search for younger girls, whom they’d take to the celebration workplace and sexually assault.
Sheikh was arrested by the police on February 29 after absconding for greater than 50 days. Whereas Sardar was arrested on February 11, Hazra was arrested on February 17.
On April 25, the Central Bureau of Investigation registered a primary info report to research the allegations of land grabbing and sexual harassment.