PM Modi meets Sandeshkhali women who alleged sexual assault by Sheikh Shahjahan

Sandeshkhali has been on the boil after several women accused Sheikh Shahjahan and his aides of sexually assaulting them.

Updated on: Mar 6, 2024, 15:04:53 IST

By Shishir Gupta

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday met women, who alleged sexual assault by suspended Trinamool Congress leader Sheikh Shahjahan in Sandeshkhali.

“They put forward their ordeal and PM heard them patiently like a father figure. The victims were very emotional with the fact that PM understood their pain,” sources in the Bharatiya Janata Party told HT.

Sandeshkhali, a village in North 24 Parganas has been on the boil after several women accused local Trinamool Congress leader Sheikh Shahjahan and his aides of sexually assaulting them. The 40-year-old TMC leader, also known as ‘Bhai’ by his supporters, was arrested last week. After the arrest, Shahjahan was suspended by the TMC for a period of six years. Several villagers also alleged land grabbing by Shahjahan and his associates.

Prior to his rally in Barasat, PM Modi had hit out at Mamata Banerjee over Sandeshkhali. “Whatever happened in Sandeshkhali is a matter of shame. The TMC government is trying to protect the person responsible for this. However, they have received a setback from the high court as well as the Supreme Court… The storm of Sandeshkhali will reach every part of West Bengal,” the prime minister had said.

The prime minister's attack comes a day after the Calcutta high court ordered the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to probe the case involving attack on Enforcement Directorate (ED) officials in Sandeshkhali on January 5 by Shahjahan and his supporters. Three ED officials were injured and their vehicle damaged by the mob on that day.

High drama unfolded on Tuesday as the West Bengal CID refused to hand over the arrested TMC leader to the CBI, hours after the Mamata Banerjee government challenged the high court order in the Supreme Court. Sandeshkhali has become a major flashpoint between the TMC and BJP ahead of the Lok Sabha elections.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke to the women victims of Sandeshkhali,

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

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