Kolkata: Welcoming the verdict on Park Street rape case, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Saturday demanded an apology from Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee for supporting the accused in the case.
“We strongly condemn it. The chief minister must apologise. She should accept that she did a mistake by protecting the accused,” BJP state president Rahul Sinha told ANI.
“The Chief Minister got involved in the Park Street rape case from the very beginning, and she tried to protect the rapists. She had said that there was no rape and she also questioned the woman for going out so late at night. She put all the allegations on the victim,” he added.
Sinha alleged that the public prosecutor Sarbani Roy tried to save the accused so that they don’t get any major punishment.
Sinha further said afraid of criticism, the government tried to wash its hand from the matter and made the public prosecutor a victim of it.
Earlier in the day, the West Bengal Government removed Sarbani Roy, the special public prosecutor in the Park Street gangrape case from its panel of lawyers, for not consulting the state government over the quantum of punishment and also for not demanding maximum punishment for the three accused in the 2012 case.
West Bengal Law Minister Chandrima Bhattacharya told ANI that the government has removed the Public Prosecutor because she wasn’t there to decide punishment, it was up to the judges and added that she had demanded 10 years of imprisonment without consulting the state government first.
Roy had allegedly told the court that the convicts were not directly involved in the actual crime and should be given the minimum punishment of 10 years in jail.
The victim was gang raped in a moving car on the intervening night of 5, 6 February 2012 by five men who offered her lift to her house from a night club situated at Park Street.
ANI