From calling a gang rape a ‘fabrication’ to celebrating an encounter: Bengal has come full circle. india news

Last updated:July 10, 2026, 13:18 IST

Prabhash Mandal, the main accused in the Baruipur gang rape and murder case, was recently killed in a police encounter.

It was August 2023. Trinamool Congress (TMC) was still upbeat over its 2021 assembly election victory. TMC’s defeat seemed almost unimaginable. But if there was one issue that troubled the party more than allegations of widespread corruption, it was crimes against women. As the then leader of the opposition, Suvendu Adhikari had a quick solution – an “encounter” under “an administrator like Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath”.

Almost three years later, the first major rape case to rock West Bengal under the new BJP government has come to light. A 12-year-old schoolgirl was allegedly abducted, gang-raped and murdered in Baruipur near Kolkata. One of the main accused, identified as Prabash Mandal, was killed in a police encounter. Police claim that Mondal snatched a policeman’s gun during crime scene reconstruction and opened fire, forcing them to retaliate.

As an impartial observer, one cannot avoid noticing the two trends immediately after the encounter.

Firstly, there has been pressure by some social media handles to portray Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari as a no-nonsense administrator on law and order by using old quotes. On Instagram, a very old video of Adhikari has resurfaced, in which he had promised at an election rally that if BJP came to power, rapists would face a police encounter instead of a lengthy judicial process. He said the BJP government in Bengal will follow the model set by Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma. The goal is simple: to develop an image of a strong man around the officer.

State BJP President Samik Bhattacharya openly supported his Chief Minister. “In this new government, if you have raped or murdered, you are in one of two places – behind bars or above the sky,” he said, pointing to the horizon.

The second trend is more sociological.

Trinamool Congress leader and Lok Sabha MP Mahua Moitra on Wednesday criticized the West Bengal government, terming the encounter of the main accused as “jungle law”. “Welcome to UP 2.0,” he wrote on Twitter. TMC MP Kirti Azad alleged that Mandal’s encounter was a “fake”. Senior party leader Saugata Roy also condemned the murder.

“…I don’t know on whose instructions the police killed an accused instead of making him stand trial. I am sure this case will be thoroughly investigated,” Roy told ANI.

Why did Suvendu’s encounter raj get tacit approval in Bengal?

Nevertheless, there has been little opposition from Bengali civil society. Conversely, both on the streets and on social media, there appears to be tacit support for the ruling government, which the political opposition lacks. As people move from urban centers to rural Bengal, this tacit support becomes more visible, with thousands of people reacting to news of the encounter with laughing emojis.

One can question where a society is headed when it celebrates a police encounter. But for West Bengal, this is something new – where a key accused, rather than the victim or complainant, is the target of state force. In a state where RG tax rape and murder probably became the defining issue of the 2026 assembly elections, it seems that “trusting the system” has been enough.

In 2011, Mamata Banerjee, still relatively young, came to power with an overwhelming mandate and ended 34 years of Left rule. Eight months later, he made what many consider one of the biggest political blunders of his career.

On the night of February 5, 2012, a 37-year-old woman, later publicly identified as Suzette Jordan, was allegedly gang-raped in a moving car after leaving a nightclub on Park Street in Kolkata. Banerjee initially questioned the allegations and reportedly described the incident as a “fabricated story”. Jordan eventually revealed her identity publicly and became a vocal advocate for survivors of sexual violence.

In December 2015, the Kolkata sessions court convicted three accused – Ruman Khan, Naser Khan and Sumit Bajaj – of gang rape, criminal conspiracy, intimidation and related offences. In September 2016, two absconding accused, including Kader Khan, were arrested in Noida and brought back to Kolkata to face trial.

This was a case that Banerjee dismissed as a “shazano ghotona”.

Since then, both Bengal and Bengalis have witnessed many such instances which strengthened the feeling that the dignity of women was destroyed through the statements and actions of those in power. Kamduni in 2013, Hanskhali in 2022, Sandeshkhali controversy in 2024 and finally the RG Kar Medical College rape and murder case at the end of the same year, which brought the entire state onto the streets.

When a widow was raped in Katwa, former Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee reportedly remarked that her family was CPI(M) supporters. In Kamduni, when he encountered angry villagers, he branded them “Maoists”. During the prolonged RG tax protests, Banerjee appealed to the people to “return to the celebration” of Durga Puja. The movement became so widespread that many shopkeepers across Kolkata complained of declining sales for Durga Puja in 2024.

Author Deep Halder says, “Bengal has been used to seeing goons disguised as protesters attacking policemen over the last fifteen years simply because they could. There was little the policemen could do. For the first time, things have changed.”

A vigorous law enforcement, a desire to see the alleged villain, whom many Bengalis believe, be “put in his place”, and an administration willing to support the police have combined to create a potent mix that perhaps explains the social media sentiment around the encounter, allowing TMC’s objections to be largely sidelined.

But violence is not a new thing in Bengal

Deep Halder also objected to Mahua Moitra’s “encounter killing” post and argued that the comparison fits more accurately with police encounters involving the Mumbai underworld from the early 1990s to the mid-2000s, with a peak between 1997 and 2003. Officers like Pradeep Sharma, Vijay Salaskar, Prafulla Bhosale and Rabindranath Angre became household names. Between 1999 and 2001 alone, around 250 alleged gangsters were killed in encounters.

Halder says, “Nobody is encouraging an environment where encounters become commonplace. But to say that Bengal has been completely non-violent and has not seen anything worse than this is a lie.”

“The culture of encounters in Bengal began during the Naxalite period between 1967 and 1971. The term ‘knock on the door’ was coined to describe police repression during that period. After the Left Front government came to power in 1977, it oversaw what was arguably worse than any encounter. In 1979, thousands of Dalit Bengalis from East Pakistan/Bangladesh Hindu refugees who had settled in the Sundarbans were forcibly evicted, resulting in hundreds to thousands of deaths.

“Indian anthropologist Annu Jalais has done a ground-breaking study of the tigers of the Sundarbans. He argues that the fish-eating tigers became man-eaters only after a state-sponsored massacre, when bodies were thrown into the river and the tigers tasted human flesh for the first time,” explains Halder, who has also written ‘Blood Island: An Oral History of the Marichjhapi Massacre’.

But no state should actively encourage a parallel justice system – be it police encounters, throwing eggs at political opponents, or parading powerful people who are now behind bars. Halder agrees.

“None of them have any place in a normal civil society.”

That being said, no other state is like West Bengal – where supporters of Sheikh Shahjahan attacked Enforcement Directorate personnel who had gone to arrest him at Sandeshkhali; Where BJP women workers were allegedly raped because of their political choice after the 2021 assembly elections; Or where a special CBI court judge had reportedly received a threat letter warning that if TMC strongman Anubrata Mandal was not granted bail in an animal trafficking case, his family would be falsely implicated under the NDPS Act.

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