Balurghat (West Bengal): In yet another gruesome incident a minor 17-year-old girl was allegedly gangraped and burnt in West Dinajpur district of West Bengal. The charred body of the victim was found under a culvert in the Kumarganj area Monday afternoon. As Kumarganj is not a high profile city like Delhi and Hyderabad, the gory alleged rape and murder took some time to come to light.
According to sources, by the time the body of the victim was discovered Monday, parts of it had been eaten by jackals and dogs. This has caused huge resentment in the area. The victim had told her family members that she was going to a friend’s house at around 4.00pm. After that she disappeared.
The body when discovered had injury marks inflicted by sharp weapons and most of it was charred. Three persons suspected to be involved in the incident have been arrested. They have been identified as Mahboor Mian, Pankaj Burman and Gautam Burman.
All three belong to the same locality in which the girl lived, but work outside the state. While Gautam and Pankaj work in Rajasthan, the third accused Mahboor is employed by a construction company in Jharkhand. Sources said that one of the three was known to the victim and she was last seen with him on a two-wheeler. This led to the arrest of the three.
The police are yet to confirm whether the girl has been raped or not. However, sources said that preliminary investigations have revealed that the three gangraped her after taking her to an isolated spot Sunday evening. When the girl threatened to disclose the incident to the village seniors, the three allegedly decided to eliminate her. They overpowered her, tied her hands and inflicted wounds on her stomach with a sharp weapon. Finding the girl still breathing they doused her with petrol and set her on fire before leaving the spot.
SP of West Dinajpur district Debarshi Dutta said he was not in a position to comment about the gruesome murder till the post-mortem has been done. “Nothing can be said till the post-mortem report comes,” said Dutta.
Local BJP MP Sukanta Majumdar warned of a major agitation if the culprits were not brought to book quickly. Terming the incident ‘unfortunate’, Kumarganj Trinamool Congress (TMC) MLA Toraf Hossain Mandal demanded an impartial probe.
The incident is similar on the lines of the ‘Nirbhaya’ case which took place in New Delhi in 2012 and the rape and murder of veterinary doctor in Hyderabad in November 2019. In the first incident, the woman was gangraped in a moving bus and brutalized, before she and her male friend was thrown out of it. The case is still on in court
In the Hyderabad incident, the vet was gangraped and then burnt to the death. However, the four accused were killed in a police ‘encounter’ when they tried to flee. Police had taken them to the spot where the crime had taken place to reconstruct the event. When one of them tried to snatch away the policeman, an ‘encounter’ took place which many termed as poetic justice’.
It remains to be seen what form of ‘justice’ the accused get in the West Bengal case.
However, the crux of the matter is that in spite of stringent laws and ‘poetic justice’, rape and murder continue to increase in various parts of India
PNN & Agencies