RG Kar brutality: ‘Verdict for justice’ backs slain doctor's mother in her fight
Telegraph | 5 May 2026
As her lead crossed 5,000, Ratna Debnath pulled her aanchal with her right hand and wiped her eyes.
“Eta anyay-er biruddhhey nyay-er vote (It’s a verdict for justice against injustice),” Ratna said, putting her glasses back over glistening eyes. “This mandate is in favour of the oppressed women of Bengal.”
It was close to noon. Ratna sat behind a heap of chairs at the end of a long corridor lined with rooms on either side at the counting centre inside Guru Nanak Institute of Hotel Management in Panihati.
“I have not sipped water since morning. I left home holding a photograph of my daughter after visiting our thakur ghar (deity at home). When I return home, I will first enter her room, hold the picture tightly against my chest, and cry,” Ratna said, her eyes welling up again.
In the stillness of the afternoon, polling agents, returning officers, candidates and central force personnel moved up and down the corridors of the institute, 17km north of Calcutta, where counting for six constituencies — Kamarhati, Khardah, Panihati, Baranagar, Dum Dum and Dum Dum North — was under way.
Ratna’s husband, Sekhar Ranjan, stood beside her as counting agents gathered with the results of the fourth round. She looked down, scanned the numbers, scribbled on a piece of paper, and looked up.
“I never thought I would join politics. It feels almost supernatural. Prime Minister Modi-ji chose me as the candidate,” Ratna said. “It was the first time a Prime Minister visited Panihati for an election campaign. It was for my daughter.”
Before addressing the rally in Panihati on April 24, Modi bent down on stage to hold Ratna’s hand before exchanging greetings — a visual widely shared by the BJP on social media.
“It is rare to see power bow before pain. Rare to see authority acknowledge grief with such humility,” the party’s IT cell chief, Amit Malviya, posted on X.
At the counting centre, as the margin kept rising, Ratna did not leave her seat. Her opponents, Tirthankar Ghosh of the Trinamool Congress and Kalatan Dasgupta of the CPM, moved around restlessly, trying to assess their margins.
“This verdict will relieve the residents of Panihati from the culture of threats that the Ghosh family has brought to this part of Bengal,” Ratna said.
The reference was to Nirmal Ghosh, the outgoing Trinamool MLA from Panihati, and his son Tirthankar, who contested from his father’s seat this time.
“The entire world, the whole country, is watching my fight for justice. I just hope I can live up to the expectations of everyone who stood by me,” Ratna said, fidgeting with a red-and-yellow armband on her right wrist, which she got from the Jagannath temple in Puri.
Draped in a saffron-and-white sari, Ratna said her fight for justice would not stop. “I have nothing to lose. This verdict will provide oxygen to my fight for justice, and for every daughter across Bengal.”
What will be her next move as Panihati’s representative?
“I will urge my workers not to engage in violence. My goal is to get justice for all,” Ratna said. “I want to remain a protesting mother, not a politician.”