The Republic of Rape

Under Mamata Banerjee, West Bengal has descended into a hellscape of lawlessness, political protectionism, and impunity.

West Bengal

In most places, a law college is a sanctuary of justice. But in West Bengal, it has become a recurring scene of barbarism. Earlier this week, a first-year law student walked into South Calcutta Law College to fill out an examination form. By nightfall, she had been dragged into a guard room, gang-raped by a criminal lawyer and two student accomplices and left bruised, broken, and traumatized. The main accused, Manojit Mishra, was no mere rogue. He is a long-time member of the Trinamool Congress’s student wing, a familiar face to ministers and reportedly shielded by senior party functionaries.

The very fact that the crime occurred inside an academic institution and not some desolate alleyway, speaks volumes about how completely the rule of law has evaporated under Mamata Banerjee’s watch. Predictably, TMC functionaries, taking a cowardly stance, are now scrambling to disown the accused, claiming he held no official post. In West Bengal, political protection often arrives not after justice is served, but to ensure it never is.

This case comes barely a year after the rape and murder of a 31-year-old trainee doctor at RG Kar Medical College, another government-run institution in Kolkata. That young woman had her face slashed, glass shards embedded in her eyes, and signs of sustained torture all over her body. There was nationwide outrage, candlelight marches and even murmurs of political accountability. But as so often happens in Bengal these days, the rage ebbed. Nothing changed. The monsters were not only among the people; they were among the powerful.

Indeed, the parallels with the horrific Sandeshkhali village are chilling. There, too, women were allegedly assaulted, harassed, and intimidated by goons aligned with the TMC. There, too, the state machinery stood inert. Only when the political costs mounted, and national attention surged, did the administration stir. Even then, it moved not to protect the victims but to contain the optics.

Banerjee, who once positioned herself as the indomitable ‘Didi’ standing up to injustice, now presides over a regime that seems both indifferent to criminality and complicit in it. Her party’s stock response to sexual violence is denial, evasion, and strategic disassociation. Her lieutenants, like parrots trained in obfuscation, issue boilerplate condemnations while quietly turning the wheels of institutional silence. If Mishra was not one of them, as the TMC now claims, then how did he continue to dominate the college four years after graduating, backed by a network of loyalists, and conveniently employed as non-teaching staff? Who gave him the audacity to act as if the college was his private fiefdom?

The rot goes deeper. The political fiefdoms that dot Bengal, whether in colleges, municipal offices or rural panchayats, function with a toxic blend of impunity and fear. The TMC, once a symbol of resistance against the CPI(M)’s authoritarianism, has become a grotesque caricature of its predecessor. Instead of cadre-led surveillance, Bengal now endures syndicate-backed lawlessness. Violence is no longer a political byproduct but governance itself.

That Mamata Banerjee continues to wrap herself in the rhetoric of “Ma, Mati, Manush” while her party harbours predators is nauseating. That she speaks of women’s empowerment while women are raped inside institutions named for justice and healing is a moral obscenity. In any functioning democracy, a chief minister presiding over such a pattern of violence would have resigned, or at least apologised. In Bengal, she blames the opposition.

The BJP, for its part, has sensed blood. With elections looming, it will hammer home the connections between the accused and the TMC leadership.

The horror in Kasba is the culmination of a culture that festers when the powerful are not held to account. The TMC’s moral collapse is now complete. What remains is a state teetering on the edge where women fear educational institutions, criminals strut as leaders and justice is just another casualty of political expediency.