A shocking incident has once again highlighted the deteriorating safety of women in West Bengal. Park Street gang-rape convict Naser Khan has been accused of molesting and physically assaulting a woman at the five-star Hyatt Regency hotel in Kolkata.

The alleged assault took place on Sunday (26 October) at around 4:15 a.m., inside the hotel located at Bidhannagar. Following the incident, an FIR was filed at Bidhannagar South Police Station against both Naser Khan and his nephew Junaid Khan, charging them under sections of the Bharatiya Nyay Sanhita for voluntarily causing hurt, using criminal force, assault, and solitary confinement.

According to the woman’s official complaint, she was spending time with her husband, brother, and friends at the Play Boy Club inside the hotel when the accused entered and initiated a confrontation. Things quickly escalated when the men attacked them with beer bottles and tried to touch her inappropriately. The victim stated, “When my brother tried to protect (me), they started throwing glass bottles at us. We tried to run away from the hotel to safety, but Junaid Khan called around 20 boys and started attacking us.”

In her statement, the victim also mentioned the horrifying moments that followed: “I called 100, dialled the number to get instant help, but they blocked all the doors. A few boys started pushing me and touching me in a very bad way in my private area. I have attached the medical report, and you can find all the attacking videos on the CCTV of the restaurant club.” Despite such serious allegations and available footage, the police have not made any arrests so far.

Victim Hid in the Liquor Room for Half an Hour

In her complaint, the woman revealed that she hid in the liquor room for nearly 30 minutes after being attacked and molested. The police eventually found and rescued her from the room, but by that time, the accused had managed to flee. Even after such a grave accusation, no arrests have been made, raising fresh questions about how influential offenders manage to evade accountability in Kolkata’s law-and-order system.

Who Is Naser Khan?

Businessman Naser Khan was one of the five men convicted in the 2012 Park Street gang-rape case, which shook the conscience of the nation. The victim, Suzette Jordan, a 40-year-old Anglo-Indian woman and mother of two daughters, was abducted outside a nightclub in February 2012. She was gang-raped for hours inside a moving car before being abandoned near a road crossing, only a few kilometres from where she had been picked up.

Naser Khan was sentenced to 10 years in prison, yet was released early in 2021—more than a year before his term ended—on grounds of “good behaviour.” His premature release, followed by his recent alleged crime, has reignited concerns over the leniency and lack of reform in the criminal justice system of West Bengal.

Sexual Violence and Victim-Blaming Under Mamata Banerjee’s Rule

Despite being led by a woman Chief Minister, West Bengal has seen a steady rise in crimes against women. Many attribute this to the indifference of CM Mamata Banerjee and several TMC leaders, who often deflect responsibility or blame victims instead of addressing systemic failures.

In a recent incident in Durgapur, a second-year MBBS student from Odisha was gang-raped by Apu Bauri, Firdos Sekh, Sekh Reajuddin, and two others on Friday (10 October) night. Rather than focusing on justice, CM Banerjee publicly blamed the victim, saying that “women should not be allowed to go outside college at night and that women should protect themselves.”

This is not new. After the 2012 Park Street case, Banerjee had dismissed the survivor’s complaint, calling it a “concocted story” and a “political conspiracy.” Such remarks from the top leadership discourage victims and embolden perpetrators.

Other disturbing cases have followed:

• A TMC worker and his aide raped a young woman in Kolkata’s Haridevpur locality, after inviting her to celebrate her birthday.

• A 24-year-old female student was gang-raped inside South Calcutta Law College in Kasba by three men.

• The RG Kar Medical College case, where a 31-year-old doctor was brutally raped and murdered while on duty, remains one of the most horrifying examples of lawlessness.

Back in 2013, Banerjee even claimed in the state assembly that the rise in rape cases was due to “population growth and modernisation,” bizarrely blaming shopping malls and multiplexes for moral decay. More recently, during the 2024 Sandeshkhali unrest, she again downplayed sexual exploitation by TMC goons, calling it merely a “minor incident.”

NCRB Data Paints a Grim Picture of Women’s Safety in West Bengal

The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) “Crime in India 2023” report reveals a deeply troubling scenario. West Bengal recorded 34,691 cases of crimes against women under the IPC and SLL, only a slight drop from 34,738 in 2022, but still among the highest in the country. This equates to a crime rate of 71.3 cases per lakh female population.

The report also disclosed that West Bengal accounted for 27.5 percent of all acid attacks in India during 2023. The state recorded 48 acid attacks and 52 victims in 2022, out of 202 cases nationwide, maintaining its grim record as the leading state in acid-attack incidents since 2018.

Furthermore, the year 2023 saw seven murders involving rape or gang-rape, 350 dowry deaths, and 419 cases of abetment to suicide of women—each reflecting the systemic failure of governance under the Trinamool Congress administration.