MP threatens to unleash rape

MP threatens to unleash rape

FPJ BureauUpdated: Saturday, June 01, 2019, 11:02 AM IST
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Award winning actor gets his real and reel persona mixed up

Kolkata

The tone of the verbal exchange between the TMC and the CPM is becoming shrill by the day.

On Monday, actor-turned-Trinamool Congress MP Tapas Paul — one of the biggest names in Bengali films for over three decades — was caught on a video threatening to gun down his Marxist rivals and “unleash his boys for raping” their women.

As the hate speech drew flak from all and sundry and shamed even his party leaders, Paul, who has used invective against political opponents earlier also, denied uttering the word “rape”, and argued he had spoken in the heat of the moment. He also contended that he had used the word ‘raid.’

‘‘If a CPI-M man dares to touch anybody, Tapas Paul will not spare him. I will take out my gun and shoot him. I always carry a gun…I will destroy his entire clan.”

Unmindful of the clarifica-tion, the CPI-M immediately demanded that Lok Sabha Speaker should take suo motu cognizance of Pal’s threat to organize rape and unseat him as a Member of Parliament. But the national uproar did not elicit an unqualified condemna-tion from the TMC. Late night reports merely said an explanation had been sought.

Bengali news channels lapped up Paul’s warning to CPI-M men to “beware” of him as he won’t “spare them and destroy their entire clan”. “If a CPI-M man dares to touch anybody, Tapas Paul will not spare him. I will take out my gun and shoot him. I always carry a gun… I will destroy his entire clan,” Paul is seen in the video telling his party workers in Choumaha village.

“I warn my opponents… If anything happens to my mother or sisters, my party workers, I will not spare them. I will have the last word. I will make their family pay. I will let loose my boys and ask them to go and rape their women,” said Paul, with his supporters shockingly cheering the MP’s every word.

Paul had made outrageous comments during last year’s panchayat poll campaign as well. “The CPI-M is a party of criminals…Beat them up, and drive them out of the villages,” he had said.

Joining the league of Trinamool leaders Anubrata Mandal and Manirul Islam — infamous for their hate speeches — Paul is seen in the video grab repeatedly warning his opponents

and threatening them with dire consequences, with his body language matching his words.

Paul later Monday offered a clarification.

“I might have said something in the heat of the moment. But the fact is I don’t roam around with a revolver. And I did not say rape; rather it was ‘raid’.

“I had said we will conduct raids but because there was so much noise, people thought I said rape,” he said.

Trinamool spokesperson Derek O’Brien termed Pal’s remarks as “insensitive” and said the party did not “in any way endorse what he said weeks ago and was being played on TV today.”

Trinamool secretary-general Partha Chatterjee, however, said: “It has to be seen in what context he has said those words.’’

Senior Congress leader Pradip Bhattacharya demanded Paul’s sack as a Member of Parliament while Marxist leader Malini Bhattacharya said her party will approach the women’s commission.

Paul shot into the limelight in 1980 by playing the title role in the blockbuster comedy “Dadar Kirti (The exploits of Dada (or elder brother))”. Since then he has acted in a large number of movies spread over nearly three and a half decades, playing the hero and lately settling for character roles. Some of his famous films are “Abodh” (Hindi) and Bengali hits “Pothbhola”, “Bhalobasa Bhaloibasa” and “Saheb”.

‘‘If a CPI-M man dares to touch anybody, Tapas Paul will not spare him. I will take out my gun and shoot him. I always carry a gun…I will destroy his entire clan.”

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