Kolkata: West Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee will lead a protest march against the Hathras "gang-rape" and murder case in Kolkata on Saturday, TMC sources said.
The rally will start at 4 pm and participants will walk from the Birla Planetarium to the Mahatma Gandhi's statue in central Kolkata, they said.
Banerjee had said on Thursday that as Goddess Sita had to go through 'Agni Pariksha', the Dalit woman who died after being allegedly raped by four men at Hathras in BJP-ruled
Uttar Pradesh was put on a funeral pyre in the dead of night.
Non-BJP parties in West Bengal on Friday took out protest rallies in several parts of the state against the alleged gang rape of a Dalit woman in Uttar Pradesh's Hathras district, and demanded immediate resignation of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath for his failure to tackle crimes against women in the northern state. The women's wing of the Trinamool Congress took out a candle march from Esplanade to Gandhi statue at Mayo Road in central Kolkata.
The protestors were led by senior TMC leaders and Ministers Sashi Panja and Chandrima Bhattacharya. "What has happened at Hathras is a shame for all of us. What is more deplorable is the way, the Uttar Pradesh administration is trying to protect the culprits and intimidate the family members of the victim," Panja said.
The Congress too took to the streets to raise its voice against the incident and demanded the immediate resignation of the UP chief minister. Around 100 Congress workers, led by state youth Congress leaders, conducted a protest march near Hind cinema in central Kolkata.
In Malda and Murshidabad, two strongholds of the Congress, party supporters took out rallies and shouted slogans against the BJP government in Uttar Pradesh. "Yogi Adityanath has completely failed as a chief minister. He should resign immediately. Instead of taking steps to improve law and order, he is using the police to stop opposition leaders from visiting the family members," Leader of the opposition in West Bengal assembly and senior Congress leader Abdul Mannan said.
Similar rallies were taken out in other parts of the state. The CPI(M) youth and students' wing DYFI and SFI-took out protest marches in the state seeking exemplary punishment for the culprits.
While the SFI took out a rally in College Street area, the DYFI took out a procession in Shyambazar area of the city. Carrying posters and placards, the SFI and DYFI cadres shouted slogans against the BJP government at the Centre and accused it of "unleashing terror" against the Dalit community across the country.
The 19-year-old was allegedly raped by four upper-caste men in Hathras on September 14. She was referred to the Safdarjung hospital in Delhi on Monday with spinal cord injuries, paralysis and cuts in her tongue. She died around 3 am on Tuesday.
Her subsequent cremation in the dead of night at Hathras, allegedly under police pressure, has led to an outrage over the law and order situation in UP.
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