Thiruvananthapuram:
With just two weeks to go before the budget session of parliament begins, the Congress has to decide how it will handle the growing controversy around PJ Kurien, the Deputy Chairman of the Rajya Sabha, who has been accused by a rape survivor in Kerala of assaulting her when she was a school girl. In 1996 she says 42 men raped her in 40 days; though the Supreme Court has exonerated Mr Kurien , she says he was among her attackers.
"I am the one who has been wronged," Mr Kurien told NDTV today, pointing out, as he has so often in the last few days, that multiple police investigations cleared him in what's known as the Suryanelli rape case after the part of Kerala that the survivor belongs to. Indicating that he will not resign, Mr Kurien said, "My conscience is clear and the case is a political one."
In the session that starts on February 21, parliament is scheduled to debate a recent set of anti-rape laws cleared by the government as an ordinance. Mr Kurien's detractors argue that given the charges against him, it would be grossly inappropriate for the 72-year-old parliamentarian to chair discussions in the Rajya Sabha.
Calls for Mr Kurien's dismissal - made by the Left in near-daily demonstrations outside the Kerala Asssembly - have spiked since the Supreme Court earlier this month ordered a retrial of the Suryanelli case, setting aside the Kerala High Court's order of 2005, in which 35 men accused of raping the woman were acquitted. Mr Kurien was not among them. The Supreme Court has asked for the High Court's verdict within six months.
The rape survivor's mother wrote to Congress president Sonia Gandhi yesterday, alleging that the police did not investigate Mr Kurien long or hard enough because of his political influence. "We have learnt from newspapers that the high command of Congress has decided to support Kurien in this matter. As far as we are concerned, it is heart-breaking," she wrote.