On Friday, when Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee's protest marchwas passing a newspaper office, a few women journalists were outside watching.
The CM looked straight at them and made eye contact. "It was a moment," said one of those present.
Her rally, from Moulali to Dorina crossing, demanded strictest punishment for the culprits responsible for the gruesome rape and murder of 31-year old trainee doctor at the RG Kar Medical College and Hospital.
During her speech at the Dorina crossing, Banerjee implicated the Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPM] and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for the large scale violence that took place at the RG Kar on Wednesday late night.
According to her, the youth wing of the CPM, the Democratic Youth Federation of India took up their organisation flag and the BJP carried the national flag after midnight and engaged in goondagiri (hooliganism) to destroy the crime scene.
The TMC supremo brought back memories of the Anita Dewan case (known asthe Bantala rape case), Tapasi Malik of Singur, the Nandigram firing incident. She asked the crowd ‘eshob kar amole hoyechilo’ (when did these incident occur), pointing to the CPM rule of 34 years in the state.
She went onto talk about Hathras case and Manipur violence, asking again ‘egulo kar amole hoyechilo’ (when did these incidents take place).
Earlier today, the Calcutta high court, hearing the RG Kar violence came down heavily on the police. It is an “absolute failure of state machinery” as it is “hard to believe” that 7,000 people walked in without any police intelligence, said the Chief Justice.
Later, the Calcutta police commissioner, Vineet Goyal, in a press conference admitted that despite “sufficient security presence”, the police did not expect the protesting crowd to turn violent outside RG Kar Hospital premises and were initially caught off-guard when a deputy commissioner-ranked officer got injured.
