India: Muslim leader institutionalized rape
of Hindu women in remote Bengal village
They target young and beautiful girls from Hindu families. Once the target is decided, they knock on the door at night. “There’s a meeting at the party office; send her,” they order. What kind of meeting takes place at a party office at 10 PM? And one that involves young girls? The meetings continue night after night, till the perpetrators are satiated. The girl is then sent home, and the perpetrators then start their hunt for the next Hindu girl. She can be as young as 15 years old; it doesn’t matter, she is just flesh, and the vultures will feast on her, unquestioned.
The eerie details are not from a dark movie; it is the bone-chilling reality endured by the Hindu families in the village of Sandeshkhali, West Bengal, India. The remote Indian village of Sandeshkhali lies by the border of Bangladesh. The village, home to the marginalized Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes within the Hindu community, is so disconnected from the rest of the country that one needs to take a boat to reach it. Perhaps this is what made it so convenient for a Muslim, Sheikh Shahjahan, trusted with political powers by the Muslim-pandering state government, to choose Hindu women and sexually exploit them for years with the assurance that he is beyond the reach of judiciary.
The state of West Bengal in India is ruled by the matriarch of Trinamool Congress (TMC), Mamata Banerjee, who, though a Hindu, is one of the greatest peddlers of the Islamic ideology in the state. Under her rule, hundreds of thousands of illegal Bangladeshis snuck into India through the porous Indo-Bangladesh border, which the administration took no efforts to mend. Through the past decade, the region has seen a massive influx of Bangladeshi Muslims. This demographic change added immensely to the plight of the marginalized Hindus in Sandeshkhali. On Sunday, February 11, Bengali author Diptasya Jash took to X and explained how the area had grown into a hotbed of illegal migration, smuggling and human trafficking.
“The Bangladeshi dacoits come to Sundarbans, loot the people and return. This has been happening for almost 30- 40 years,” says Jash. Before the TMC formed the government in West Bengal, the state was ruled by the communist party, which was just as lenient towards Muslims and intentionally overlooked the pouring in of Bangladeshi intruders inside the Indian borders. Several land reforms by the Leftist government facilitated the settlement of illegal Bangladeshis in this area. Shahjahan is not the first Muslim to enforce his reign of terror in Sandeshkhali. Before the Trinamool Congress came to power, two Muslims named Issa Lashkar and Mujid Master had established their dictatorship here under the umbrella of the Communist party.
The situation was so grave that the Hindus of Sonakhali village (42 kilometres from Sandeshkhali) were barred from celebrating any Hindu festival without the permission of these Muslim tyrants. Hindu families couldn’t even hold prayers inside their homes; a Hindu family was celebrating “Jamai Soshti” (a Bengali Hindu festival of inviting and honoring the sons-in-law) and failed to get permission from the Muslim dictators. Issa Lashkar razed the entire village and gunned down 15 members of that family for this “disobedience.”
The sexual exploitation of Hindu women began with these Muslims protected by the communist government. “If you were getting married, first you must send your wife to Isha Laskar or his men. They would keep her for one day/ week, and only then you could take your wife back home,” recounted Diptasya Jash.
The communists might have lost political power in West Bengal, but Sheikh Shahjahan preserved the barbarian legacy of Isha Lashkar and continued to treat Hindu women as maal-e-ghanimat.
Shahjahan’s men, “Come and say, tonight you must send your wife or daughter to the party office meeting. Now nobody knows what meeting takes place at 10 o’clock or 12 o’clock. The lady has to stay there the whole night, and the next day, if they wish, they will return or take her,” narrates Jash.
His claims were supported by Union Cabinet minister Smriti Irani, who revealed the plight of the Hindu women of Sandeshkhali to the media. She said that Shahjahan’s men “visited door to door to identify the most beautiful woman in every house. Who is young? The husbands of identified women were told that they might be the husbands, but now they have no right to their wives. They would abduct women every night. They didn’t leave us till they were satisfied.”
Jash expressed the possibility that TMC leader Sheikh Shahjahan might not be an Indian citizen. Jash asserts that Shahjahan came to India from Bangladesh with his uncle and grabbed land in Sandeshkhali. The allegations made by Jash are not refutable because of incidents of Bangladeshi nationals running for office in India on TMC tickets, Bangladeshi actors participating in election campaigning for TMC and Bangladeshi commoners who enter India on student and medical visas partaking in anti-BJP (TMC’s opposition) propaganda have all taken place in the past.
TMC attracted massive backlash after the story of Sheikh Shahjahan broke and escalated a national debate. Shahjahan has been at large for 33 days now; he went into hiding after his supporters launched a planned mob attack on ED officials who were on their way to raid Shahjahan’s property last month. Now emboldened with national support, local women are demanding Shahjahan’s arrest. “Sheikh Shahjahan is in the village. However, the state police have been unsuccessful in locating and arresting him. The police openly talk to him, then why can’t he be arrested?” says one of the protesters.
Let me guess - because the police are corrupt?
Why would the Hindus put up with this madness? Probably because it has been going on for so long that it's become normal.
Sexual abuse of small girls has been going on for at least many centuries across India:
The Voyage of J H van Linschoten
