'Not on students' union list': TMC distances itself from Kolkata gangrape prime accused; says all 3 'deserve to be beaten to death'

NEW DELHI: The Trinamool Congress on Friday distanced itself from the college gangrape case prime accused Manojit Mishra who is allegedly a member of party's student wing.

After the Bharatiya Janata Party released photos of Mishra with ministers and TMC leader Abhishek Banerjee , the TMC accused the saffron party of "unnecessarily politicising" the incident.

“BJP is unnecessarily and intentionally politicising this issue. I ask them, what about the people who have committed heinous crimes and were seen with you?” Trinamool Chhatra Parishad president Trinankur Bhattacharya said during a media briefing.

“Justice should be based on the crime committed, not on whether the person is a worker of TMC, BJP, or CPI(M),” the spokesperson added.

The TMC also claimed that the college had not had a functioning student union for many years, and Mishra was not even part of the current student union list.

“There is no proof that TMC is linked to this incident. The accused was not on the student union list. We recently restructured our district committees, and the accused was not a part of those either," Bhattacharya said.

“The TMC Students’ Wing stands firmly with the victim. We demand the strictest punishment. This is an extremely unfortunate incident, and we condemn it. Under the leadership of Mamata Banerjee and Abhishek Banerjee, every TMC worker has spoken out. These animals (referring to the accused) deserve to be beaten to death,” he added.

This comes after police said that the Mishra was a former president of the college’s Trinamool Congress Chhatra Parishad unit and the organisational secretary of the South Kolkata wing of the TMC’s student body.

Photographs of the accused available in the public domain also show him in close proximity to several leaders of the ruling party in the state.

Meanwhile, all three accused have been arrested and produced in court, which remanded them to police custody for four days.

Police said the victim's confidential statement before a judicial magistrate was also in the process of being recorded.

The ghastly incident at South Calcutta Law College has triggered horrific memories of the rape and murder of an intern inside the city’s RG Kar Medical College in August last year, which had led to a major political storm across the state.