A citizens’ platform on Thursday accused the President of being selective.

While the President condemned the atrocities on a postgraduate trainee doctor in Calcutta, she remained silent on the assault on women in BJP-ruled states like Manipur and Maharashtra.

The platform called — Desh Banchao Ganamancho (Save Country People’s Platform) — spoke a day after President Droupadi Murmu in her first public statement on the rape and murder of a postgraduate trainee at RG Kar Medical College and Hospital said she was “dismayed and horrified” and called for an “honest self-introspection” in the light of horrific crimes against women.

“It is fine that she has spoken about what has happened at RG Kar Medical College and Hospital. But surprisingly she did not utter a word about what happened in Manipur last year or recently in Maharashtra, states that are ruled by the BJP. The President is being selective and this is not expected of her,” said Rantidev Sengupta.

A purported video showing two disrobed women being paraded along a village road and scores of men harassing them physically in Manipur surfaced in July last year.

The alleged sexual assault on two 4-year-old girls by a male attendant at a school in Badlapur of Thane district had led to massive protests in Maharashtra recently.

“The President also chose to remain quiet on the protest by wrestlers against alleged sexual harassment by Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) president Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh last year,” said members of the platform.

The 2023 protest, led by champion wrestlers Vinesh Phogat, Sakshi Malik and Bajrang Punia, was to demand that Singh, then BJP MP from Uttar Pradesh’s Kaiserganj, be removed from his WFI post and arrested.

The platform also condemned the BJP for seeking to hijack a people’s movement on the RG Kar brutality by organising bandhs and unleashing violence on the streets of the city.