Mamata Banerjee accuses BJP of staging Sandeshkhali, cites video

West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Saturday accused the BJP of scripting the Sandeshkhali incident and questioned why Prime Minister Narendra Modi was silent on the issue of a woman alleging sexual molestation by governor C.V. Ananda Bose.

"The entire Sandeshkhali incident was preplanned. The BJP had scripted it well. The truth has been exposed. I have been saying this for a long time," Banerjee said at an election rally in Chakdah in Nadia district. "I have not seen the entire video. I will definitely see it," she added.

"PM Modi gave sandesh (messages) regarding Sandeshkhali, but remained silent on the representative of the Centre, the governor's sexual molestation issue," Banerjee said.

On Saturday, the Trinamool Congress (TMC) released a video on social media, claiming that the Sandeshkhali episode was a "conspiracy" by the BJP to defame West Bengal in the run-up to the ongoing Lok Sabha election.

The 32-minute video, which the party claims was a 'sting operation', appears to show BJP worker Gangadhar Koyal, the block president of Sandeshkhali Block II, who is heard saying “there wasn’t any rape of women but it was framed as such”.

In the video, the man resembling Koyal is also heard saying that the entire incident was organised by state BJP chief Suvendu Adhikari (who was earlier Banerjee's deputy in the TMC before switching sides), and that his personal assistant had visited the place. “We couldn’t ask our wives to do this (make false rape claims), but dada managed everything from outside. He convinced the women. And I got the rape complaints done.”

Trouble erupted in the Sandeshkhali area of North 24 Parganas district in the first week of February, when villages began witnessing protests over allegations of sexual atrocities against women and land grabbing by local TMC leaders, particularly Sheikh Shahjahan, who was subsequently arrested and suspended from the party for six years.

"An incident has happened (in Sandeshkhali). It was made to happen. First, they (BJP) sent the Enforcement Directorate, and then ED's friend, the BJP, entered Sandeshkhali along with some media which started creating hullabaloo,” Banerjee had said at the time.

What began as an agitation against land grabbing and forced labour by Shahjahan and his associates Shibaprasad ‘Shibu’ Hazra and Uttam Sardar soon became a protest against the alleged sexual atrocities perpetrated on local women, with the state’s opposition parties and even governor Bose jumping into the fray to condemn police inaction and administrative negligence.

With inputs from PTI