Two days before her house was attacked in the dead of night, a woman from Sandeshkhali, a village in North 24 Parganas district of West Bengal, had deposed before a magistrate accusing local leaders of the ruling Trinamool Congress party of sexual assault at a nearby party office. On February 16, the woman, accompanied by four others from her village as well as police personnel, made the deposition under Section 164 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, which empowers a magistrate to record a person’s testimony or confession regardless of whether or not they have jurisdiction over the case. On reaching the Basirhat sub-divisional court, the woman also recorded a video saying that she had reached safely.
On the morning of February 18, however, she did not feel safe any longer. As she spoke to journalists in front of her house, she said, her voice trembling, “Look what they have done. Had I not gone into hiding last night, they would have killed me.” Pointing to the holes in the walls of her house built with bamboo and cane, she alleged that the ‘visitors’ of the previous night had identified themselves as the police, abused her father-in-law, and tried to break into the house.
When asked repeatedly about what she had endured, she threw up her hands in frustration. “How can I tell you,” she said in anguish. “They did bad things.”
