Rumpa Sarkar

Malda, Feb. 14: Rumpa Sarkar and Sanjay Mondal left for school together to participate in Saraswati puja celebrations. They did not return home.

The body of the 15-year-old girl was found this morning. Next to her was her barely conscious boyfriend.

Rumpa was allegedly raped, her wrists slashed, and dumped on railway tracks under a bridge on the outskirts of the town to make it look like suicide. Her head had been crushed under the wheels of a train.

Sanjay lay a few feet away. He had been brutally beaten and one of his eyes almost gouged out. He was barely conscious when police rushed him to the district hospital, where he slipped into a coma.

Government Railway Police inspector-in-charge Satya Chakrabarty said: ?I am certain that this is the work of criminals who wanted to give the incident the appearance of a suicide. I am afraid she seems to have been gang-raped before being murdered.?

Rumpa, a student of Class IX, and Sanjay, who was supposed to appear for this year?s higher secondary examinations, were neighbours in the New Gayespur area of the town. The railway bridge is less than a kilometre from their homes.

?This is the handiwork of deadly criminals who thought both had died. Sanjay was brutally attacked, perhaps when tried to fend them off.?

The police found a sharp knife at the spot. They also collected a ladies? watch, two pairs of footwear, silver anklets, gold earrings and a pearl necklace. An officer said the motive was ?plain rape?, not robbery.

According to members of the two households, they left home last noon. When they failed to return home till late at night, the families filed a missing persons report with the Englishbazar police station.

Rumpa?s father Bablu Sarkar said both families had accepted their relationship and that they would be married some day. ?When we were looking for a groom for Rumpa, she told us she was in love with Sanjay. He was a good student and we did not mind,? said Lakshmi Sarkar, her mother.

?They went to watch a film last evening. We found the stubs of two tickets for the evening show at Bichitra cinema from the boy?s pocket. They probably walked towards the river before returning home,? said Chakrabarty.

Residents who found the body and the boy said Sanjay managed to tell them that a gang of five or six attacked them.