Launching a tirade against TV panelists, who had commented about the rise in crimes against women in the State, Trinamool Congress chief West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee accused them of being involved in pornography.
“Eminent people who dress up and appear on talk shows everyday to discuss rape with great relish, many of them are associated with pornography... They discuss rape... on talk shows for money. These aren’t talk shows, these are money shows,” she said.
Meanwhile, protests against the Banerjee government’s failure to curb crimes against women continued on Friday too in Kolkata.
It was almost a moment of déjá vu when hundreds of protestors, including intellectuals from West Bengal, took to the streets. In 2007, similar scenes had unfolded when intellectuals had taken out a rally against the atrocities by the Left Front government in Nandigram.
There was no sloganeering as hundreds of citizens sang songs and registered an artistic protest.
The rally marked the largest instance of apolitical protest against the two-year-old government. Bringing traffic to a virtual halt, well-known faces such as Bengali poet Shankha Ghosh, athlete Pinki Pramanik, painters Wasim Kapoor and Samir Aich, actors Sabyasachi Chakraborty and Biplab Chatterjee, theatre personalities Rudraprasad Sengupta and Kaushik Sen among others trooped onto the streets.
While filmmaker Mrinal Sen couldn’t make it, the 90-year-old sent across a letter which was read out by Shankha Ghosh.
However, the CM refused to give importance to the rallies. “One or two people by taking out a procession are thinking they have done a lot. Where were they when 55,000 people were killed during the Left regime?” she said.