Forty-seven days and counting. Where is Shahjahan Sheikh, the alleged perpetrator of various crimes against women, land grabbing, abductions, and murders in West Bengal’s Sandeshkhali village? While the opposition and critics of the Trinamool Congress government ask this question, senior officers of West Bengal police say Shahjahan has not been named in any FIR of sexual assault, rape, or molestation, while authorities have already arrested 19 people including Uttam Sardar and Shibu Hajra, known as the TMC strongman’s associates who were named in complaints.
So why is he “untraceable” or “absconding”? Police officers say that he is named in the FIR filed by the Enforcement Directorate in which he is accused of “conspiring” to attack officers of the central agency who were on duty.
Shahjahan is a senior Trinamool leader, member of zilla parishad, and the party’s block president of Sandeshkhali.
West Bengal police are “unable to apprehend” Shahjahan despite several IPC offences and even after the attack on ED officials, a division bench of the Calcutta High Court comprising Chief Justice TS Sivagnanam and Justice Hiranmay Bhattacharya observed on Tuesday while hearing a petition filed by the state government against orders of coordinate benches of the HC regarding setting aside the promulgation order of section 144 in Sandeshkhali.
The court also said, “It is rather surprising that the person who is the core of the problem cannot be apprehended to date and is on the run. Therefore a larger view of the matter has to be taken by the state, especially when the person who appears to be the sole cause of the problem is still absconding.”
Where is Shahjahan?
“Is it believable that a state which has several intelligence agencies, special task forces, adequate infrastructure and equipment to trace, track and arrest criminals or accused on the run has not been able to locate Shahjahan? The senior IPS officers leading the state police force have been at the forefront of anti-Maoist operations, tracking senior Maoist leaders and neutralising them,” said a senior ED officer, citing the alleged police inaction and non-cooperation with the central agency and its officers in this particular case.
The directorate has now been joined by central intelligence agencies in its efforts to locate Shahjahan, News18 has learnt. The central agencies have some fresh leads on the TMC leader but are waiting to see if there is any further action by the Bengal police.
“The ED officers are the complainant here. We lodged the case with the local thana after the attack. Law and order are state subjects, and it is the responsibility of the local police to find him and bring him to justice. However, Shahjahan is one of the accused members in a case that the ED is investigating. We can help them with leads if they reach out to us for help,” said a source in the central agency.
The ruling Trinamool Congress has accused the BJP of fomenting trouble in the area.
Bengal BJP unit chief and MP Sukanta Majumdar told News 18, “Locals say he (Shahjahan) is roaming on bikes and cars but police are not able to catch him. This is the scenario of West Bengal. Mamata Banerjee is instructing police about the arrests, and only those specific men are getting arrested.”
Past instances
BJP sources and critics say a close look at the series of incidents involving allegations of sexual assault or other instances of crimes against women over the past decade, since 2011 when Mamata Banerjee assumed office, shows how the chief minister has always been the first to counter victim accounts in such cases and brand them “politically motivated” following public outrage.
This has been a continuing trend over the last 12 years in the state, which began with the infamous Park Street gang-rape case, they maintain. The victim, they point out, was defamed by the ruling party leaders and the prime accused remained “absconding” for years. Every time, there is a remote connection between the ruling party and the accused, the case or the incidents are termed “politically motivated” in the state, critics say.
“It has now become a pattern in West Bengal. Arrests come only after, if at all, the chief minister makes a public announcement, but not before political colour gets revealed by her party machinery,” said a retired IPS officer, who served the state under both the Left Front and the Trinamool Congress regime.
In February 2012, a woman was gang-raped by five men, according to the FIR she filed with the Park Street police station in Kolkata. It was a multi-faceted case, with allegations of rape, assault and impersonation. The victim, who died of illness a few years ago, was called names, while the chief minister termed her complaint “fabricated”. The prime accused in the case was arrested five years later by Kolkata police. He was reportedly connected to senior Trinamool leaders in the area.
In 2013, a college student was gang-raped and killed in North 24 Paragana district’s Kamduni village. The accused persons were allegedly connected to local panchayat members. Demanding their arrest and punishment, local women started a protest movement. The outrage was called “politically motivated” and the protesters were termed “CPM cadres” by TMC leaders.
In 2014, late Trinamool MP Tapas Pal, while trying to intimidate his opponents in Nadia district said that he would “let loose his boys to rape women” there if they did not fall in line.
Trinamool Congress leaders though are still following the same path, saying that the women from Sandeshkhali narrating their stories of pain are “outsiders” and “made-up victims”.