Three members of Trinamul’s “fact-finding” committee headed by Bengal INTTUC president Dola Sen on Friday met National Human Rights Commission chairperson Arun Kumar Mishra and appealed for registering a case of human rights violation in Allahabad’s Khaiwajpur where five of a family had been killed on April 17.

The committee members said the NHRC had received all documents, including audio-visual clippings, they had collected during their meeting with the victims’ family members in the BJP-ruled Uttar Pradesh. The five-member committee had visited Khaiwajpur on April 24.

“The NHRC chairman, along with three other members, spoke to us and assured us of looking into our petitions,” said Sen, who was accompanied by Trinamul leaders Lalitesh Tripathi and Saket Gokhale to the NHRC office.

The visit of the Trinamul leaders took a political turn after Sen alleged that the NHRC Chairperson had referred to violence in Calcutta and Bengal when she introduced herself as a person from the state.

“During introduction, the chairperson of NHRC asked me about my home. When I told her that I was born and brought up in Calcutta, he suddenly said the city and Bengal witnessed many violence. I immediately protested against such comments and gently reminded him that we did not come here for violence in Bengal. NHRC is a statutory body and it was not expected that its chairperson would comment like political leaders. We are not happy with this unnecessary comment,” said Sen on Friday evening.

Trinamul had raised several allegations against central agencies and statutory bodies like the NHRC for taking side of the BJP and being more active in states ruled by anti-BJP parties.

Sen’s experience on Friday led several Trinamul leaders to focus on the biased approach towards the state.

In Bengal, there are several instances of the NHRC lodging suo motu cases but for incidents like the one at Khaiwajpur in Yogi Adityanath-ruled Uttar Pradesh, the body remains a mute spectator, said a Trinamul leader.

“Let’s see what they do with the killings at Khaiwajpur. We have submitted all the claims and demands of the family members, including their lack of trust in police investigation,” said one of the members of the fact-finding committee.

Sen, however, said following her rebuttal to Mishra’s comment on Bengal’s violence, the NHRC chairperson had words of praise for chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s political struggle.