‘Encounter Or Hanging': Abhishek Banerjee Urges New Law After Kolkata Rape-Murder

Senior Trinamool Congress leader Abhishek Banerjee called for the introduction of a new bill in Parliament on Sunday to expedite the trial and conviction of rapists.

Banerjee stated that sexual offenders deserve either death by hanging or to be dealt with through encounters by law enforcement agencies.

Photo Credit: PTI

Abhishek Banerjee Urges New Law On Rape

His comments followed the horrific rape and murder of a doctor in a government hospital in Kolkata. Banerjee demanded that trials and convictions in sexual assault cases should be completed within seven days. The remarks were made during an administrative meeting at Amtala in his Diamond Harbour constituency in West Bengal, as reported by PTI.

Banerjee criticized the BJP for protesting on the streets against the murder of the postgraduate trainee doctor, urging them instead to press the Centre to pass a bill for swift justice. He assured that the Trinamool Congress would support such a bill if it were tabled in Parliament, as reported by Hindustan Times.

Banerjee emphasized that by setting a fixed time frame for trials, taxpayer money could be saved. He asserted that rapists, who do not deserve to live in society, should be dealt with either through encounters or by hanging. Acknowledging the failure of political parties to prevent heinous crimes against women in cases like Hathras, Unnao, Manipur, the Nirbhaya case in Delhi, and incidents in West Bengal, Banerjee called for urgent reforms in the justice system.

In response, BJP state president Sukanta Majumdar accused Banerjee of trying to deflect attention from the state's failure to ensure women's safety in hospitals. Last week, a postgraduate medical student on night duty at the hospital was murdered in the seminar hall, as per media reports.

Colleagues reported that the woman had eaten dinner with two colleagues before going to the seminar hall to rest after 2 am. Her body was found the next morning in a semi-naked state. The initial autopsy confirmed that she was sexually assaulted before being murdered, with blood found flowing from her mouth and private parts, and her neck was found to be broken. A person has been arrested in connection with the crime.