NEW DELHI: The Delhi Police on Monday dismissed Mamata Banerjee’s allegation that a Bengali-speaking woman and her child were assaulted in the national capital for speaking their language, and termed the viral video shared by her, “fabricated” and “politically motivated.”
On Sunday, Banerjee posted a video claiming that the woman and her son—migrant residents from Malda district’s Chanchal area—were victims of “linguistic terror” by Delhi Police personnel. “Even a child is not spared... Where are they taking our country now?” she wrote on social media.
DCP (East) Abhishek Dhania refuted the charges and dubbed the video “misleading”. He identified the woman as Sanjanu Parveen and stated that during questioning, she alleged that four men in plainclothes, posing as police officers, took her and her child to a secluded spot on the night of July 26 and extracted Rs 25,000 from her.
Dhania added that an investigation involving CCTV footage and local intelligence revealed inconsistencies in Parveen’s account. “During questioning, the woman confessed that a relative of hers, a political worker from Malda, had asked her to make the video. It was first circulated locally in Bengal before appearing on social media,” he said.
Calling the episode a “deliberate attempt to malign cops”, Dhania said the claims were “baseless and fabricated.”
However, Banerjee stood by her claims on Tuesday, asserting that the woman and her child were “threatened” after the incident. “They were taken to various police stations, just as I had predicted... We want them to come back. The truth will come out,” she said at a public event in Birbhum.