Team of seven 'victims' from Sandeshkhali to meet President Droupadi Murmu
Telegraph | 15 March 2024
A team of seven “victims” from Sandeshkhali will meet President Droupadi Murmu at Rashtrapati Bhavan on Friday, to apprise her of crimes against women and land-grab allegedly by local Trinamul leaders and demand central forces in the area.
A BJP leader from Sandeshkhali, accompanying the seven, said they would submit a written memorandum about their demand to deploy central forces not for a few villages but the entire Sandeshkhali Assembly constituency.
Sandeshkhali falls under the Basirhat Lok Sabha seat.
The meeting between the Sandeshkhali delegation and President Murmu is deemed politically significant at a time the BJP is desperate to keep the issue alive as a Lok Sabha poll plank to politically corner Mamata Banerjee government.
“We will inform our President how poor people from the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes were tortured by the ruling party in our state,” said Dipankar Nayek, a member of the delegation that includes four women.
“We will request her to ensure central forces are deployed in Sandeshkhali as the lives of many like us at the forefront of protests are under threat,” added Nayek, a contractual teacher of a Sandeshkhali school whose four-bigha plot was allegedly grabbed by prime accused Trinamul strongman Sheikh Shahjahan to convert into a bheri for pisciculture.
They had lodged complaints of land-grab and sexual crimes against the now-arrested Shahjahan and his aides Shibaprasad Hazra and Uttam Sardar.
All seven reached New Delhi on Thursday. They will meet President Murmu around 12.30pm on Friday.
A BJP source said Friday's Rashtrapati Bhavan meeting was fixed after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s March 6 rally at Barasat, from where he warned that the Sandeshkhali “storm” would sweep Bengal and ensure an end to Trinamul “rule of terror”.
A source said the BJP has been backing villagers protesting in various pockets of Sandeshkhali.