Days after Delhi Police rebutted the claims of assaulting a woman from Malda, calling it “fabricated” and “politically motivated”, the TMC on Wednesday presented the woman, identified as Sajnu Parveen, at a press conference in Kolkata, where she reiterated her charges against the Delhi Police.
At the TMC press meet, Sajnur Parveen recounted the alleged incident and said she was falsely accused of being a Bangladeshi, taken to a secluded location, tortured along with her child, and extorted by four people posing as Delhi Police personnel.
“Two men and two women, identifying themselves as Delhi Police personnel, first raided our house on July 25, checked our Aadhaar cards, and searched for my husband, who was out for work then.
They called us Bangladeshis, although we kept telling them we were from West Bengal and showed them our Aadhaar cards,” Parvin alleged.
“They returned the next day, took us to a secluded location, and asked us to chant ‘Jai Shri Ram’. I told them I am a Muslim and refused. They slapped me and kicked me in my belly. They also assaulted my child… They then asked me for Rs 25,000,” she said at the press meet attended by Cabinet Minister Firhad Hakim and TMC state general secretary Kunal Ghosh.
TMC Rajya Sabha members Samirul Islam and Mausam Benazir Noor, she said, helped her to come to Kolkata.
Rejecting the Delhi Police charge that the video of her with her bruised one-and-a-half-year-old child was “staged”, Parveen accused the Delhi Police of releasing partial CCTV footage, claiming it didn’t capture where she was picked up and taken to before being assaulted.
The woman also accused the Delhi Police personnel of forcing her to sign papers, taking away her mobile phone, and not allowing them to meet anyone.
After West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee posted the video on her X handle alleging that police in the national capital did not spare even a child whose mother tongue is Bangla, the Delhi Police rejected the charge, claiming that “the so-called assault video of the family was falsely created by a relative who acted on instructions from a political leader based out of Malda district.”
“When we questioned both the husband and wife, they told us that she had lost her way back home. They later concocted the story after the husband’s uncle – who is a political worker in TMC – told them to,” a senior Delhi Police officer had said.
BJP MP from Kanthi, Soumendu Adhikari, then filed a police complaint in Delhi, demanding an FIR against the chief minister for deliberately disseminating a “false, fabricated, and communally charged video” with the intent to malign the image of the Delhi Police and incite public discontent.
The TMC supremo, however, doubled down, saying the family was being threatened.
On Wednesday, TMC leaders filed a complaint against the Delhi Police at the Pragati Maidan police station in Kolkata.
“Attempts are being made to silence the family only after Mamata Banerjee protested. The video of the place where the child and his mother were beaten was not released. Instead, the family was detained and blackmailed to extort money. It was said that Bangla means Bangladeshi. They said they were residents of Malda, West Bengal, but they were not spared either,” said TMC leader Ghosh.
“The CM has done the right thing by speaking up. The victim’s ordeal proves that the CM’s claim was true,” Hakim said.
Reacting to the woman’s latest charges, Leader of Opposition in the Assembly and BJP MLA from Nandigram, Suvendu Adhikari, said: “Those who brought them (the woman and her family members) here will have to face consequences.”