Poet Mandakranta Sen has been at the receiving end of online threats after she came out in support of fellow poet, Srijato Bandopadhyay whose poem was taken down by Facebook.
Poet Mandakranta Sen has been at the receiving end of online threats after she came out in support of fellow poet, Srijato Bandopadhyay whose poem was taken down by Facebook.
Bandhopadhyay was in the centre of a controversy for posting a 12-line poem called 'Abhishap' (Curse), on Facebook on March 19. A student from Siliguri student, who was also a member of the a group called the 'Hindu Samhati', had filed a criminal case against Bandhopadhyay for hurting Hindu sentiments. The poem apparently made veiled references to Yogi Adityanath. Facebook later apologised to the poet, after site said it "accidentally" took down his post on March 24.
Sen had come out in support for Bandopadhyay and on March 27 at 11.25 pm had posted 10 lines of poetry. Within 48 hours, she received threats of gang-rape.
Sen has put in a complaint at the cyber crime cell of Kolkata Police against one Raja Das, who had commented on her post saying women like her should be gangraped. “I have a feeling that comments like these are politically motivated. I have filed an FIR at the cyber crime department,” she said.
In her poetry, Sen had blamed both the RSS as well as the Jamaat for spreading violence in the country. Talking to DNA, she said that the threat was for supporting Bandpadhyay. “I had always been for freedom of speech and expression and would support everyone whose right to speech has been encroached upon,” she said. Asked if she was afraid, Sen said that she was more terrified to think where society was heading and that she would continue to write poetries against all atrocities.
Sources at Lalbazar, the Kolkata Police headquarters, said that they had initiated an investigation on the basis of the complaint of Sen.
BJP state president Dilip Ghosh, on the sidelines of a party event on Wednesday, said that these were publicity stunts. “These are publicity stunts by people who have been forgotten and these are attempts to get back into media glare. It had begun on Facebook a few days ago and will continue for some more days,” Ghosh said. He also said that the comments could have been engineered to malign the BJP. “If what they write is freedom of speech, then society too had reacted and now it is up to the law to decide the right and the wrong,” Ghosh added.
When the Hindu Samhati member had put in a police complaint against one of Bandopadhyay, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had said that he had had nothing to worry about while Ghosh had said, “Why is she coming to his rescue? Why can't law take its own course and punish the guilty?”
Sen, who had received the Sahitya Akademi Young Writers Special Award in 2004 for her work in Bengali poetry, had returned the award in 2014 as a mark of her protest against intolerance and communalism in society.
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 "Mandakranta Sen")
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