Kolkata : West Bengal government has brought back senior IPS officer Damayanti Sen, who was sidelined following the high-profile Park Street rape case in 2012 by the Mamata Banerjee-led government, to probe violence committed against women and children in the state.
On Monday, Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari announced Sen’s appointment as member secretary of a commission set up to examine atrocities against women and children, particularly from Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe and minority communities, during the TMC’s 15-year rule.
At the time, Sen was serving as Joint Commissioner (Crime) of Kolkata Police and was the first woman officer to hold the post. The Park Street case had erupted into a major political controversy after a woman alleged she was gang-raped inside a moving car after leaving a nightclub in Kolkata’s Park Street area on February 6, 2012.
As public outrage mounted, Banerjee had described the incident as a “sajano ghatana” (fabricated story) allegedly aimed at maligning her newly-elected government. While the political controversy escalated, investigators under Sen proceeded with the probe and tracked down the accused within days.
Soon after the case was cracked, Sen was transferred from the Crime Branch at Lalbazar to the Police Training College in Barrackpore. No official link between the probe and the transfer was ever acknowledged by the state government. However, the episode remained part of Bengal’s political and bureaucratic discourse for years.
Despite her academic credentials and reputation within policing circles, many observers felt Sen remained away from politically sensitive assignments during much of the TMC tenure. In 2022, the Calcutta High Court entrusted Sen with investigating four rape cases and the widely discussed Rasika Jain death case, a move that was seen in administrative circles as a sign of judicial confidence in her investigative abilities.
Read Also : Supreme Court Upholds Order On Removing Stray Dogs From Schools, Hospitals