The National Commission for Scheduled Tribes (NCST) confirmed, ‘TMC leader Sheikh Shahjahan and his associates, accused of land grab and sexual assault under coercion in Sandeshkhali, West Bengal, will forcibly take MNREGA wages from poor tribal families and torture them for voting against the party’.
Complainants told a three-member National Commission for Scheduled Tribes (NCST) team, led by its Vice-Chairperson Ananta Nayak, that the West Bengal Police allegedly protected Shahjahan and his accomplices.
The investigation team is back in Delhi and is in the process of filing a report, which will be later sent to the government. The panel has received more than 50 complaints of sexual harassment of tribal women and land grab by Shahjahan and his associates.
The riverine Sandeshkhali area in West Bengal’s North 24 Parganas district — situated on the borders of the Sunderbans, about 100 kilometres from Kolkata — has been the talk of the town for more than a month with protests against Trinamool Congress (TMC) leader Shahjahan, who is escaping, and his supporters.
“The NCST team learned that Shahjahan would instruct poor tribal people to give him their MNREGA money. And in case they had already spent it, he would ask them to borrow money from lenders and give it to him,” Nayak said.
‘The complaints, the majority of whom are Hindus, told the investigation team that the accused and his associates tortured people who voted for other parties in elections, the NCST vice-chairperson said.
The panel learned that Shahjahan and his associates would ask local women to come for meetings late at night, torturing the family members of those who did not comply with his demands, he said.
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