“Raped in front of grandson”: 60-yr-old survivor of Bengal post-poll violence narrates horror, moves SC

New Delhi: Two rape survivors including a minor girl and a 60-year-old woman have approached the Supreme Court seeking a Special Investigation Team (SIT) probe into the gang-rape incidents and violence during the West Bengal Assembly elections-2021.

In her plea filed through Advocate Arunima Dwivedi, the sexagenarian woman from Khejuri stated that TMC workers had barged into her residence on May 4 and gang-raped her in front of her six-year-old grandson.

She further submitted that before leaving the house, all her cash and valuables were stolen.

The senior citizen also alleged that TMC workers used rape as a weapon to take revenge, humiliate and silence political rivals in the state during the post-poll violence.

Her application said that her son-in-law tried to register a case in connection with the incident with the local police, he was unable to do so. It was only after the daughter-in-law persisted that an FIR was filed.

The 17-year-old girl's plea contended that she was gang-raped on May 9 by the supporters of Trinamool Congress and sought an SIT probe into the incident and also sought a transfer of case out of the state citing threat to the lives of her and family members.

The incident occurred when she was returning home with her friends on May 9, according to her plea.

Both these pleas have been filed in the main application seeking a central agency probe into the incidents of political violence and ‘targeted’ killings that followed the assembly poll results in the state and to determine whether the state machinery was complicit with the perpetrators of the violence.

On May 18, the apex court had issued notice to the West Bengal government in the main petition. Besides, a five-judge bench of the Calcutta High Court is also seized on the issue of post-poll violence. (UNI)