The purported sting video — whose authenticity could not be independently verified by The Telegraph — prompted Trinamool to seek an apology from the BJP national leadership, which has been citing Sandeshkhali to try and corner Mamata Banerjee in election season
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| Abhishek Banerjee addresses the media in Calcutta on Saturday.: PTI photo |
Devadeep Purohit, TT, Calcutta, 05.05.24 :
Trinamool on Saturday flagged a viral video that appears to show a local BJP leader admitting that women in Sandeshkhali were given Rs 2,000 each to file rape and sexual abuse complaints on the instructions of Suvendu Adhikari.The purported sting video — whose authenticity could not be independently verified by The Telegraph — prompted Trinamool to seek an apology from the BJP national leadership, which has been citing Sandeshkhali to try and corner Mamata Banerjee in election season.
With the local BJP leader in the video purportedly contending that no rape or sexual abuse had taken place in Sandeshkhali, Mamata and Trinamool national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee castigated the BJP for “maligning Bengal”. Senior BJP leaders claimed the video was fake.
The chief minister, who was in Nadia to address two poll rallies, was the first to talk about the video. “They created a big drama over Sandeshkhali…. I have been telling you that it’s a conspiracy scripted by the BJP, which has finally come out,” she said.
Her brief comments suggested she was leaving it to Abhishek, her nephew and political heir apparent, to lead the charge against the BJP in connection with the video.
“This is the nadir of shamelessness…. How low can they (the BJP) stoop? If a party can sell the dignity of women at Rs 2,000 for political gain, people should think twice before voting for them,” Abhishek said at a hurriedly convened news conference.
A short video was played before the two-hour news conference at Trinamool Bhavan, off EM Bypass. It juxtaposed, with the “sting” video’s contents, footage of Sandeshkhali-related comments by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union home minister Amit Shah and Bengal leader of the Opposition Adhikari.
The video, played by Abhishek, sought to suggest that the attempted ED raid on local Trinamool leader Sheikh Shahjahan’s home on January 5, which brought on a mob attack and catapulted Sandeshkhali to national limelight, was politically motivated.
It also tried to establish that the local women’s subsequent allegations of rape and sexual abuse by ruling party leaders, and the April 26 arms seizure at the house of a Shahjahan aide in Sandeshkhali, were stage-managed.
“I give 48 hours to the BJP national leadership to apologise to the people of Bengal…. If they don’t, people will think that the party president, Union home minister and the Prime Minister were part of the conspiracy,” Abhishek thundered.
Late on Saturday evening, Amit Malviya, co-in-charge of the Bengal BJP, accused Trinamool of orchestrating “a fake sting on a junior functionary of the BJP”.
“TMC, instead of expressing regret over what happened in #Sandeshkhali, first tried to defend, then brazen it out and now is attempting to obfuscate,” he posted on X.
The Bengal BJP too swatted away the charge of a conspiracy. Adhikari accused Abhishek and two others of manufacturing the video with “mala fide intention”, and state unit spokesperson Shamik Bhattacharya termed it “fake” and demanded a CBI probe.
When this newspaper asked Abhishek about the origin of the purported sting video, which had gone viral on Saturday morning, he said: “I got it the way you all got it.”
Asked whether it was genuine, he said: “The onus is not on me. There are three characters (Gangadhar Koyal, mandal president, Sandeshkhali-II; Shanti Dolui, mandal president, Sandeshkhali-I; and a woman complainant of sexual abuse) in the video.
“The person who is there for 80 per cent of the time (Koyal) has admitted that it is his voice… and that it’s him in the video…. This is a testament to the video not being fake.”
Dolui appears to say in the video that the arms seized on April 26 had been brought from outside as part of a plan. The woman, whose name this newspaper is withholding since she is a sexual abuse complainant, purportedly says she had signed the complaint letter without being aware of its content.
Attempts by this newspaper to reach Koyal, Dolui and the woman failed as their cellphones were switched off.
In the evening, BJP sources released a letter Koyal had written to the CBI terming the video footage “morphed and edited”.
Koyal had earlier in the day told some television channels that he indeed featured in the video but alleged the audio had been tampered with.
“We have been saying from Day One that everything was part of a plot, and the sting video has vindicated us…. The Sandeshkhali-II mandal president can be heard saying that everything was done at the instruction of Suvendu Adhikari,” Abhishek said.
“You can hear in the video that women were brainwashed into lodging rape and sexual abuse complaints. Gangadhar said Rekha Patra (who was initially the face of the Sandeshkhali protests and later became the BJP candidate from Basirhat) took Rs 2,000 to lodge complaints…. In their complaints, they said the incidents had taken place six to seven months earlier, and therefore no medical examination can be done.”
Patra said the video was a Trinamool “tactic” and suggested that Koyal “must have been scared” into making the purported remarks in the video.
Asked whether the party would press for a probe on the basis of the video, Abhishek said he would urge the state government to bring it to the attention of the Supreme Court, which is hearing a case on Sandeshkhali.
Unlike his party colleagues, Abhishek did not want to comment on whether the video would give Trinamool an advantage in the 36 seats in Bengal where polls are yet to be held.