RG Kar tragedy: CPI(M) creates cell to legally assist women protesters facing police harassment

Kolkata: The CPI(M) leadership in West Bengal has formed a legal cell exclusively for giving assistance to women protesters in case of police harassment for demonstrations against the rape and murder of a junior doctor of R.G. Kar Medical College & Hospital in Kolkata.

According to the CPI(M) politburo member and the party’s Secretary in West Bengal, Mohd Salim, the leadership has received complaints of police harassment from a number of women protesters from different pockets in the state.

They have complained about police personnel harassing them for participating in protests or “reclaim the night” programmes, which are continuing even after over a month has passed since the crime took place.

“There are complaints that many women protesters are being harassed by police for participating in the protests. Some of them are unnecessarily being summoned at the local police stations. The police and local Trinamool Congress supporters are threatening them,” Salim alleged.

He said that the special legal cell constituted for the aid of the women protesters will have women advocates only.

“Our advice is that if any woman protester is unnecessarily summoned to the police station, she should contact any member of the legal cell instead of going alone to the police station,” Salim said.

He also said that the Trinamool Congress legislator from Panihati Assembly constituency in North 24 Parganas district, Nirmal Ghosh, who faced a marathon interrogation on Monday by the officials of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), should be subjected to custodial interrogation by the central agency sleuths.

Incidentally, the ancestral residence of the R.G. Kar victim comes under Panihati where Ghosh is the ruling party MLA.

Ghosh accompanied the members of the victim’s family to the hospital on the morning of August 9 when her body was recovered from a seminar hall within the R.G Kar premises.

Ghosh was also spotted at the Panihati Crematorium at the time of the cremation of the body of the victim.

After coming out of the CBI office on Monday evening, Ghosh said that he accompanied the parents of the RG Kar rape and murder victim to the hospital on August 9 as a responsible elected public representative.