Dipali with her mother Felani in 2003; Felani at her Nadia home on Saturday. Picture on right by Pronab Mondal

Phulia (Nadia), April 23: Felani Basak works furiously on her spinning wheel. She is in a hurry to finish her work for she has to cast her vote for change. “I hope the new chief minister will bring justice to my daughter, although she is no more,” she says.

Felani’s deaf and mute daughter Dipali had been raped allegedly by a CPM supporter 19 years ago. Dipali was paraded at Writers’ Buildings by Mamata Banerjee in 1992 as a symbol of Bengal’s “lawlessness” while demanding then chief minister Jyoti Basu’s resignation.

In March 2009, the resident of Nadia’s Phulia village died of snakebite after years of obscurity, her tragic tale slipping into forgotten history. Her assailant was not arrested and Mamata seemed to have forgotten her too, Felani said.

“My daughter died of snakebite two years ago. She was bitten by the snake when she went to the courtyard to pick up dry clothes from the line. She lay on the courtyard for 14 hours. I was too old and frail to take her to hospital. I called some neighbours, but most of them were getting ready to go to a soiree. Some of them suggested that I watch her till morning. Dipali was in a lot of pain. Slowly, she passed away,” Felani said.

“ to chole gelo… Mamata- mukhhomontri hobey… or jara khoti korechilo, tader ki ebar shasti hobey (Dipali passed away… Mamata will become the chief minister… will the culprits be punished now)?” the 77-year-old asked, sitting in the courtyard.

Felani said that for a couple of months after her daughter’s rape, “some politicians visited our home but Mamata never came”. “Slowly, such visits started to decrease and one day, they stopped.”

As Mamata hit the headlines with the Writers’ episode, Dipali silently gave birth to a baby girl in an ashram at Dhapa, where Calcutta’s garbage is dumped, off EM bypass. “The child is now growing up in an ashram in Calcutta. Dipali and I visited the ashram several times but she was not allowed to meet her daughter lest she grew too fond of the child she could not support financially,” Felani said.

She said her daughter’s assailant used to live in the same village. “But he left the village a day after he raped my daughter. The administration made no efforts to track him down and arrest him,” Felani said.

“Mamata can say she could not bring justice to my daughter as she was not in power. Now, everyone is saying she will become chief minister. Now the police will act on her direction. I hope my daughter will finally get justice,” she added.

Felani has kept Dipali’s salwar-kurta, “the only good clothes she had”, in an old trunk. “Whenever I touch it, tears come rushing to my eyes,” the mother said. “She used to earn Rs 20 a day by spinning yarn. I am old and can’t see properly. It’s tough for me to work on the spinning wheel. I barely earn Rs 10 a day,” Felani, a widow, said.

Dipali’s elder brother Nikhil said: “Mamata was dragged out of Writers’ Buildings by the police when she raised her voice for my sister. But after that, she never enquired about Dipali. However, I hope to see my sister’s assailant behind the bars after Mamata comes to power.”

In 1992, Mamata, then a Union minister in P.V. Narasimha Rao’s cabinet, had stormed Writers’, dragging the rape victim along. In chief minister Basu’s absence, she sat on the floor in front of his chamber demanding a meeting with him. After three hours of persuasion failed, the police lifted Mamata bodily and took her away.