Women’s Safety Top Priority: RG Kar Rape-Murder Victim’s Mother Speaks Out

In the quiet neighbourhood of Sodepur, the act of casting a vote on Wednesday morning felt less like a political ritual and more like a personal reckoning. Among the thousands queuing in North 24 Parganas was Ratna Debnath, the BJP’s candidate for Panihati. To the world, she is a political hopeful; but to West Bengal, she remains the mother of the young doctor whose brutal rape and murder at RG Kar Medical College twenty months ago ignited a firestorm of grief and rage that has yet to extinguish.

As she emerged from the booth, the ink on her finger was not just a mark of participation, but a symbol of a long-standing promise to her daughter. For Debnath, the campaign trail has been a journey through a landscape of shared pain. "Apart from my daughter, hundreds of women have also been facing atrocities," she told reporters, her voice steady but laden with the weight of her history. "My priority is women's safety."

The politics of the RG Kar tragedy have now officially moved from the hospital corridors and protest marches to the centre of the election battlefield. Debnath remains haunted by the unanswered questions of that night—the "misrule" she attributes to the TMC, the security lapses that allowed an intruder into a supposedly safe space, and what she alleges was a concerted effort by the state government to "hush up" the case. In her eyes, this election is a referendum on a system that failed her child, and she exuded a quiet, determined confidence that the voters would choose a "regime change" to prevent another family from enduring her nightmare.

This second and final phase of polling across 142 constituencies is a high-stakes test for all parties, coming on the heels of a historic 93.19 percent turnout in the first phase. But in Panihati, the contest feels deeply intimate. Debnath faces off against the TMC’s Tirtankar Ghosh and CPIM’s Kalatan Dasgupta, yet for the mother-turned-candidate, the real opponent is the silence she has been fighting for nearly two years. As the state waits for the May 4 counting day, her presence in the queue serves as a living reminder that for some, the ballot is the final weapon in the pursuit of justice.