Well-known journalist, Shahriar Kabir, who was instrumental in rescuing and rehabilitating Purnima, is equally disgusted. Without mincing his words, Kabir said: “Don’t rapes take place in India? It is wrong to drag Bangladesh’s internal issue into India’s election politics. Purnima and her family haven’t given up the fight. She is still the face of protests in Bangladesh. Sheikh Hasina is fond of her.”
Fifteen rapists were given 12-15 years prison term in Purnima’s case even as the Awami League government and rights groups supported her wholeheartedly so that she could pursue a degree in electrical engineering from the Daffodil International University. Mercifully, she lived away from the public glare until 2013 when she suddenly discovered a Facebook page using her name and photo. Talking to the BBC in 2016 about how she was abused and hounded on social media, Purnima said: “The Facebook page had my office address and even my phone number. It was posting dirty words and dirty photos of women. There were posts that said, ‘I am available for hire’.”
“At the time I was working at a local TV station, where many of my friends and colleagues accepted friend requests from that Facebook account thinking it was genuine. They asked, ‘Why are you posting these dirty pictures? Is this how you earn your living?’ One friend even asked me how much I charge.”
That Facebook page was ultimately pulled down thanks to Purnima’s persistence. In 2017, Bangladeshi film actress-turned Awami League politician, Tarana Halim, who was then junior minister for Information, hired Purnima as her personal assistant. In April 2018, Halim paraded Purnima in a Kolkata auditorium and made her narrate graphic details of her rape. The motive behind the Awami League show in defiance of all diplomatic protocol was to tell India that it must support Sheikh Hasina in the December 2018 general elections. Otherwise, the Jamaat-BNP would capture power and many more Purnimas would be raped.
West Bengal state security advisor Surajit Purkayastha subsequently scolded Bangladeshi officials for vitiating communal harmony by parading Purnima in Kolkata.
If BJP comes to power in West Bengal, will Supriyo introduce chapters on the Purnima and eight-year-old Asifa Bano rape cases in textbooks – and send a suitable Hindu boy from the New India to marry Purnima who is still single because of the stigma attached to rape in ‘backward’ Bangladesh?
(The writer is an award-winning journalist. Views are Personal)
