The Kasba law college student has lived to tell the tale. The RG Kar trainee doctor did not.
Other than that, one of the most glaring differences between the alleged rape and murder of the doctor in Kolkata last August and the gang rape of the law student in the city on June 25 is the police handling of the two cases.
Kasba, so far, has been copybook, while the handling of the RG Kar case was ham-handed and left Kolkata Police with egg on their face. They failed to secure the scene of crime. They stood and watched as gangs of goons vandalised emergency wards of the medical college hospital, intent, it seemed, on destroying remnants of evidence of the crime. The list is unending. At RG Kar, the media arrived soon after the victim's body was found. At Kasba, the gang rape came to light after two days and only after the police announced it on X.
The Kolkata Police have clearly learnt from their past mistakes. Not only did they register an FIR at once, cordon off the scene of crime, send the victim for medico-legal tests and arrest the accused in record time, they have also ensured the girl and her family are away from prying TV cameras and mikes, putting a lid on a public spectacle. But how they pursue the case will be closely watched.
It appears to be an open-and-shut case, but there have been slips between the lip and the cup in the past. The police need to present a watertight case in court and secure a quick conviction of the accused to underline they mean business. They also need to show that they will not be swayed by political pressure and win the full confidence of the people.
But the Trinamool Congress? Unlike the police, the ruling party has taken no lessons from the past.
Mamata Banerjee has not said a word about the crime or the fact that the alleged rapist was a party member with links to top level functionaries. On June 27, two days after the incident, the TMC condemned it on X. But then a new target moved into their horizon, and they were busy slamming Kartik Maharaj, a Padmasree awardee in Murshidabad district seen as close to the BJP, after his name sprung up in a rape case.
The alleged rape took place in 2012. Thirteen years later, the FIR was filed shortly after the Kasba incident hit headlines—a coincidence that is hard to miss.
The Trinamool Congress could have charted a different trajectory. If Mamata Banerjee had stepped up last August after the trainee doctor's death, summarily sacked Sandip Ghosh, the RG Kar Medical College principal known to be close to TMC leaders, and declared zero tolerance for sexual violence—certainly by TMC party workers—would Monojit Mishra, the accused rapist in the Kasba case, have dared to force himself upon the 24-year-old student?
Chances are, no, he would not. But Mamata Banerjee was not as unequivocal as she perhaps needed to be, giving errant elements like Mishra—with a history of harassing women—the confidence of impunity.
Latest investigations and media reports suggest the Kasba main accused, Monojit Mishra, 31, was a habitual offender and has been arrested five times in the last 12 years for a range of crimes. Yet, he had a free run of the law college where he was once a student and where he is now a temporary employee.
His job is thanks to the blessings of senior TMC leaders, including a veteran MLA, who is member of the college's governing body. This MLA, whom Mishra publicly calls "uncle", nominated him to a temporary job at the college. Once there, Mishra assaulted men and women students, ran extortion rackets and, some say, even demanded money for admission. In a video that has recently surfaced, Mishra is heard beating up a student and, in between expletives, declaring, "I am a professional criminal."
Mamata Banerjee has a lot to live down in her handling of past cases of sexual violence against women. When the Park Street case erupted in 2012, she claimed the incident was staged. "Sajano Ghotona" (Arranged event), she called it. In 2013, when a college goer at Kamduni off Kolkata was brutally raped and murdered, she got into a verbal showdown with the victim's friends and accused them of being Maoists and CPM agents.
Then came 2022, when a 14-year-old at Hanskhali, apparently in a relationship with the son of a local TMC leader, bled to death after attending the boy’s birthday party. Mamata remarked the girl was having an affair with the boy and possibly pregnant. And then there was RG Kar last year. Her reactions brought Kolkata out on the streets on each of these occasions.
The police handling of the law college case and the swift arrest of the accused could have undone some of the damage to the TMC's record, which plummeted last year with RG Kar. But senior party MPs Kalyan Banerjee and Mahua Moitra have not helped the situation. Moitra accused Banerjee of misogynistic comments on the law college case. Banerjee hit back with a brutal personal attack on Moitra.
An MLA, Madan Mitra, who made equally misogynistic comments, was show caused by the party and has since apologised. But the TMC is mum on Banerjee's offensive attack. Mamata Banerjee is believed to have expressed great displeasure at the face off. But privately.
The TMC's resistance to learning from the past has come back to haunt the party at a very inconvenient time, less than a year from the Assembly elections due in West Bengal in 2026. The BJP is trying to capitalise on the situation. How far it will succeed is unclear as the TMC has launched a strong counteroffensive, pointing to the spate of crimes against women in Rajasthan, UP and Madhya Pradesh and claiming Bengal's record is better than that of the BJP-ruled states.
But whataboutery as a strategy comes with an expiry date. TMC needs to script a fresh response so that it can live down RG Kar and Kasba Law College.
(Monideepa Banerjie is a journalist of over 30 years of standing and has reported from Kolkata and the northeast for the nation's topmost TV channels and publications. Views are personal.)
