Kolkata:
Left and Congress activists protested in Kolkata on Saturday against the alleged gang rape of a Dalit woman in Uttar Pradesh’s Hathras that has triggered a nationwide outrage.
Carrying placards having slogans such as “Defeat fascist BJP at Centre and TMC in Bengal” and “Down with fascists who throttle democracy”, around a 1,000 members of the CPI(M), Congress and their affiliates marched from Moulali to Esplanade in the heart of the city in the afternoon.
As they tried to break a barricade at Esplanade, trying to go towards a UP government office to protest, a scuffle broke out with the police.
The activists claimed that several of them received injuries in the scuffle, which was denied by the police.
Later, they torched effigies of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee at the Esplanade crossing.
“We burnt Modi’s effigy for the attack on democratic forces and his failure to curb the rise in the number of rape cases in the country, mostly in UP. We are also burning the effigy of the Trinamool Congress chief for the law and order breakdown in the state and increase in attacks on women,” SFI leader Subhajit Sarkar said.
The 19-year-old Dalit woman was allegedly raped at a village in Hathras by four men on September 14. After her condition deteriorated, she was referred to the Delhi’s Safdarjung hospital where she breathed her last on Tuesday.
She was cremated in the early hours of Wednesday, with her family alleging the local police forced them to conduct the last rites in the dead of the night.
