Victim Who Was Gang-Raped by TMC Goons in Front of Her Father Na
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OPINDIA, Online, 27.7.2021 Page No. 0, Size:(0)cms X (0)cms. ‘We want Hindu girls, they said. The police are with them’: Victim who was gang-raped by TMC goons in front of her father narrates her story to OpIndia https://www.opindia.com/2021/07/bengal-post-poll-violence-tmc-goons-gangrape-hindu- women-murder-arson-nhrc-mamata-banerjee-victims-bjp/ On the 2nd of May, even as results were trickling in, it became rather evident by late afternoon that Mamata Banerjee was coming back to power with a thumping majority. By early evening, a reign of terror was unleashed on those who had either worked for BJP during the state elections or, had voted for the party. As TMC criminals gheraoed the BJP headquarters in Hastings, started lynching workers like Avijit Sarkar, started stone pelting and burning offices down to ashes, in a remote village in Burdwan, Ritu (name changed) and her father desperately searched for the money they had at hand and started collecting it on a table. They had heard the sounds from others in their village, the news had travelled fast – TMC goons were unleashing hell. Both her father and Ritu had worked for BJP in the run-up to elections and they knew the goons would come knocking on their door sooner or later, given what they were doing in the rest of the village. Several houses in their locality were being brutally attacked by those who purportedly worked for TMC. In this particular village, it was a gang of Muslim men burning down houses, harassing Hindus and attacking the men who worked for BJP in the run-up to elections. News of some women being gang-raped by TMC men had also spread like wildfire. Talking to OpIndia, Ritu says that while the village burnt and women got gang- raped, there was no police in sight. She says that the police, in fact, refused to answer the phone when calls for help were being made. At about 6-7 PM on 2nd May, just as they were collecting money and getting ready to leave and it was lightly raining outside, TMC men came knocking. Ritu says that several TMC goons, both Hindus and Muslims, came knocking at the door. About 12 goons, she said, were standing outside the house at the periphery guarding and some goons, 8 or 9 of them, led by one Mamun Sheikh, came inside her house. The moment they came inside the house, they asked Ritu’s father where she was. “Teri beti kaha hai”, Ritu says they said. At that time, the TMC goons and Ritu’s father started getting into a scuffle. They were pushing her father around and constantly asked “where is your daughter?”. The father kept pushing them away and saying that his daughter was not at home. Ritu, at this time, was hiding in the kitchen. While her father tried desperately to ward the goons off, they caught a glimpse of Ritu, hiding, trying to save herself. Her father told the goons to leave his daughter alone and do whatever they want with him instead. This, while some of the goons had already OPINDIA, Online, 27.7.2021 Page No. 0, Size:(0)cms X (0)cms. dragged her out and were holding her, refusing to let her go. As her father begged, the goons said, “No. We want only Hindu girls, and we want your daughter”. “They took out their gun and started beating papa mercilessly”, Ritu told OpIndia. “I tried to save papa but I could not do it. They kept beating him. They were holding me and like dogs trying to harass me. Can you understand what was happening? I could not understand if I should save myself or papa.. should I manage how they were beating me up or save papa”, she added. The goons who were in the house suddenly hit Ritu’s father on his head and made him sit in one corner, with a gun pushed to the temple of his head. “Even when they made him sit in the corner after hitting him on his head, they did not just leave him alone. They kept kicking and beating him”, Ritu says. The main culprit, Mamun Sheikh and his accomplices dragged Ritu in front of his father, tore her clothes and proceeded to mercilessly gang-rape her. Her father, she says, kept pleading with Mamum and his accomplices, begging to leave his daughter, saying that he would do anything they want him to do. They refused to listen and continued to brutalise Ritu. She got to know that another TMC goons was called Hasan when Mamun and others called out to him, “We are finished, why don’t you come now”. Ritu says he did not do anything to her. But he was called out after they were finished brutalising her so he could brutalise her too. “It was the Muslims who gang-raped me”, Ritu said. “After they were done gang-raping me and beating my father, he somehow managed to pry me away from them and dragged me to the backdoor of our house”, she said. Her father somehow mustered the courage because he was listening to the assailants talking about killing Ritu – so she would not “open her mouth” about what happened. Her father did not bother what stones, broken glass etc were laying on the road. He dragged her out somehow just to get away from the barbarians. With no clothes on her body, her father took his pagdi off and covered her with it. Through a Christian cemetery, Ritu and her father kept running. While they were trying to get away, she could hear Mamun’s voice in the distance, mocking her. “How far will you run. You will have to come back here to me someday. Where did she go”. They were not really searching for her seriously, she says. They were just taunting her. She says they could not figure out which forest they ran into. OPINDIA, Online, 27.7.2021 Page No. 0, Size:(0)cms X (0)cms. Ritu was taken to her father’s friend’s house. When asked if she ever went to the police or even the hospital after she was gang-raped, she said that they thought there was simply no point going to the police or the hospital because no matter where they went, TMC goons would find them. “Going to the police is like handing yourself over to the TMC goons”, she said. Her father’s friend prescribed some pill to her, that she took for days. Since the 2nd of May, Ritu said that they have been running around, trying to be safe. They hardly come back to their own home and when they do, they do not go out even to the terrace. After she was gang-raped, Ritu had spent a long time in her friend’s house – friends who had also discouraged her to go to the police. Talking about the fear she faces, Ritu says that it has come to a point where she cannot even leave her house without donning a Burqa. “I wear the Muslim attire.. the Burqa when I go out. Even my friends borrow it when they need to go out”. She says she does this so she can stay safe. If she goes out as a Hindu, she is hounded in her area by the Muslims. She says that the TMC men, the Muslim workers who raped her, have done the same with several women from the locality. But none of them are willing to come forward and talk about it. When Ritu filed a complaint with the NHRC, she was discouraged by many, but says that she rather die before taking her complaint back. While she tried to convince the other women to come forward and talk about it, they refused, asking her to leave them alone and in peace. Police harassment, pressure to take the complaint back and unbridled fear There were several times that the police has tried to harass Ritu and her father, she says, to give a different version of the events and to get it on record. A few days after 2nd May (Ritu could not confirm the date), Ritu was living at her friend’s house. Her father, who is also mostly not at home after the incident, was there in their Burdwan house that day. Ritu says that the police came and asked the neighbours if they were at home. When the neighbours lied for her father and said they were not, they tried to push the door in. Failing, they had left. She says she is confident that the police will not take any action against the culprits, in fact, if they can, they will probably put her, the victim, in jail under false charges. She says that the West Bengal police will never stand for Hindus or even help them. They will only help TMC and their supporters. On another occasion about a few days ago (Ritu can’t confirm the date but she says it was about 6-7 days before this interview was taken on Saturday, 24 July), she was alone at her Burdwan house when some TMC goons had accompanied the police to her house. These were not the same goons who had gang-raped her, but some other TMC goons. She had however managed to keep herself hidden. OPINDIA, Online, 27.7.2021 Page No. 0, Size:(0)cms X (0)cms. This was not all.