Kolkata: The gang rape of a 24-year-old student in South Calcutta Law College on 25 June, 2025, has sparked a political fire in West Bengal and revealed deep fissures within the Trinamool Congress (TMC) party and ferocious critical opposition to it.
The ruling party has been put on the defensive with a case involving a former TMC Chhatra Parishad leader, Manojit Mishra, who happens to be the main accused. Within 12 hours, Kolkata Police arrested Mishra and students Pramit Mukhopadhyay and Zaib Ahmed, as well as a college security guard, and remanded them to custody until July 1. The medical report of the survivor identified the marks that were on her neck and chest, with the forensic reports still in progress.
What friend? TMC MP Kalyan Banerjee created an uproar. Will police serve in schools?” On the next day, MLA Madan Mitra fanned the flames as he said, Had they not gone to the college when it was closed, this would not have happened. Both statements, severely criticised as victim-blaming, elicited a distancing by the TMC, with the party declaring the comments to be in the context of personal capacities and that they were the personal opinions of the concerned personalities.
Mahua Moitra, TMC MP, stung her fellow colleagues on X and tweeted, In India, misogyny is not a party position. The obvious difference with @AITCofficial is that we reject these sick remarks regardless of who says them.” Her position became heated as Banerjee struck back and attacked the new marital status of Moitra to ex-BJD MP Pinaki Misra. Mahua has returned after her honeymoon, and she is fighting with me. She destroyed a 40-year family by marrying .
BJP jumped in, and party leader Amit Malviya termed the statement made by Mitra as vile and TMC as protecting the criminals. The BJP West Bengal chapter accused the party of being anti-women, as there has been a victim-blaming tendency. There were mass demonstrations; student groups protested on the street in front of the college. This situation was also compared with the case of RG Kar, and the inefficiencies in the system of preventing accidents were revealed.
Minister of State for Transport and Minister of State of the TMC, Shashi Panja, highlighted the party has a zero tolerance for crimes against women, the men involved have been arrested, and further investigation is being carried out by an inquiry team of five experts. But the silence of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has started attracting criticism, and the opposition has been demanding that she resign.
The open conflict that occurred months after another flashpoint between the TMC MPs in Delhi is another issue that the party faces before the 2026 Assembly. While Kolkata Police reconstruct the crime scene and wait to obtain the results of the forensics, the case illustrates the necessity of responsibility and tactfulness when it comes to the gender-based violence issue.