By Mirza Mosaraf Hossain, TwoCircles.net
A case of alleged sexual harassment of a minor in West Bengal’s Birbhum district has caused quite a stir between families of the accused and the victim, with attempts by some parties to give it a communal colour.
On December 29, a minor student, who is in her sixth grade, came to the residence of Ataur Rahman–her tutor–with her results. The 45-year-old rebuked the minor for failing in the final exam and later consoled her, putting his hand on her head in front of many other minor students who attend his morning batch. In the evening, the parents of the minor along with her grandfather and many others rampaged the tutor’s house and abused him for ‘harassing’ the minor. The tutor was home with his wife and two children. The angry mob also beat the 19-year-old daughter of Rahman when she came out of the room. Later, the local councillor arrived at Rahman’s home followed by the police, which arrested Rahman. He is now in the Rampurhat Police custody.
But when other students of Rahman came to know about his arrest, many students including females from the current batch recorded a video, saying their tutor was innocent. On December 30, 180 students protested in front of the Rampurhat Police Station. They all termed it as a framed conspiracy and demanded the release of the tutor. In another video captured by a local social activist, the grandfather of the so-called victim apologised and reportedly said, “whatever is done from our part is condemnable and we are sorry for that.”
But the controversy is far from over. And to understand the same, we must explain the history of Ataur Rahman. Originally from Rajgram, Rahman has been living in Rampurhat for over 25 years now. After finishing his Higher Secondary, Rahman was unable to continue his studies and hence came to Rampurhat, about 50 km from his native place, to become a tutor.
Here, he lives in a rented house at Dakbangla para, Ward no 4 and gives tuition to over 250 students. When his students heard that their teacher had been arrested, they refused to believe that Rahman could commit such heinous things and condemned the arrest. Many of them are linking the allegation with a dispute that the tutor had with the grandfather of the minor girl.
The TMC-led local Councillor in Ward 4, Abbas Hossain, spoke to TwoCircles.net and said, “ the family of the girl told me about the incident at around 10 A.M on Friday and urged to settle the issue. I told them to wait for a day and they agreed. But then the girl’s family reached Rahman’s house in the evening and attacked them. However, they did not expect Rahman’s students to protest. When they saw the students marching, they got scared and again urged me to sort out the problem.”
Hossain added, “Earlier, Rahman used to run a monetary fund, Basil, which was a part of the Rose Valley group. When Rose Valley was banned, he had to reimburse the deposited money of the customers by selling his small property and doing more tuition. The minor’s grandfather was one of the depositors and he threatened Rahman with dire consequences for the delay in getting his deposited money. This may be the reason behind their framing of the false allegation.”
One former non-Muslim student of the tutor concurred with Hossain. “The grandfather used to work for BJP in his Suri residence. He, along with the BJP locals is trying to criminalize the issue in order to revenge. But the fact is that we all, Hindus and Muslims, live here peacefully like a family.”
Shilpa Roy, a former student of Rahman and currently finishing her graduation, said “I used to go to his tuition from my fifth grade and my younger sister, now in H.S has also been attending his tuition since she was in class 5. We never saw anything objectionable in his behaviour. He always treated us like his own daughters. Our parents also never questioned us when we asked for permission to allow us to join his excursion tour. In fact, many of us students went for the first time out of our house under his surveillance.” She also said, “ I called in sir to my home the day just before the day he was accused of sexual harassment to help me with my impending college exams.”
Payel Khatun, another student who will be appearing for her H.S Exam this March, questioned the time gap between the supposed harassment and the protest by the family. She said, “If the allegation was true, then why did the family besiege Sir’s home in the evening when the incident took place in the morning? Was it because they wanted to bring in more people and attack together? Our sir is innocent and we all know it very well.” She added, “The grandfather once abused us by saying us characterless studying under a characterless tutor when we were coming back after finishing our classes.”
Meanwhile, the Police said they would refrain from commenting on the issue until the investigation is completed. The Superintendent of Police, Birbhum district, spoke to TwoCircles.net. “The charge sheet will be prepared once the investigation is completed…until then, we cannot comment on the issue,” he said.