BJP fields RG Kar victim’s mother in West Bengal election push

Ratna Debnath’s candidacy brought one of West Bengal’s most searing crimes straight into the ballot box. The Bharatiya Janata Party fielded the mother of the RG Kar Medical College and Hospital rape-murder victim from Panihati, a North 24 Parganas seat where the party is trying to turn grief into a sharper attack on the Trinamool Congress government’s record on women’s safety.

Debnath was named in the BJP’s third candidate list for the West Bengal Assembly election on March 25, 2026, and entered the race in Panihati constituency No. 111, which falls under the Dum Dum Lok Sabha constituency. The seat has been in Trinamool hands: Nirmal Ghosh won there in 2021 with 86,495 votes, defeating BJP’s Sanmoy Bandyopadhyay, who polled 61,318, by 25,177 votes.

The broader backdrop is the continuing fallout from the August 9, 2024 killing of a 31-year-old postgraduate trainee doctor at RG Kar Medical College and Hospital in Kolkata. The case triggered nationwide outrage over hospital security, policing and the handling of violence against women, and a Kolkata court later sentenced the prime accused, Sanjay Roy, to life imprisonment in January 2025. Debnath has made that tragedy the center of her political appeal, saying her campaign is about women’s safety, justice and what she sees as failures in law and order under Trinamool rule.

Her nomination also showed how the BJP is trying to frame the election. With West Bengal voting in two phases on April 23 and April 29, 2026, and counting scheduled for May 4, the party has leaned heavily on women’s safety as a campaign theme. Debnath’s presence on the ballot gives that message a personal face, but it also raises a sharper question: whether a mother’s loss can be converted into institutional accountability, or whether the case becomes another symbol in a bitter state contest.

Debnath said during voting that she was abused and intimidated by Trinamool workers and that she filed a police complaint. She also said women’s safety was her top priority and accused the state government of failing to protect women. Opponents and local party workers protested her presence at polling booths, accusing her of influencing voters. In Panihati, the politics of grief has become inseparable from the politics of power.