[Sandeshkhali] Calcutta High Court Declines Urgent Hearing For Plea Claiming That Rape Victims Were Forced To Withdraw Cases

The Calcutta High Court on Thursday declined an urgent hearing for a plea seeking the court's intervention into claims that victims of rape in Sandeshkhali were being threatened and forced to withdraw their complaints to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).

The court had earlier transferred the probe into the allegations of rape and land grabbing by former TMC strongman Shahjahan Sheikh to the CBI, and directed it to hold 'confidence-building exercises' in order to obtain complaints from the locals.

On the present occasion, Advocate Priyanka Tibrewal, one of the suo moto litigants in the case approached a division bench of Chief Justice TS Sivagnanam and Justice Hiranmay Bhattacharya contending that women were being threatened in the area and that people 'covering their faces' were entering the women's homes threatening them to withdraw their complaint.

It was alleged that there was considerable fear in the local women who had resorted to hiding in the fields in order to avoid the alleged threats and that a local had even been abducted.

Advocate Tibrewal stated that she had spoken to 200 women who expressed to her that they were under constant threat and fear.

Counsel for the State took severe exceptions to these submissions. "There is no problem in the area, she [Tibrewal] is the one creating the problems if I may say so," the counsel stated.

Accordingly, in noting the submissions, the Court stated that the CBI was in seisin of the issue and that the petitioner would be free to approach the CBI to allay her grievances, if any.