The alleged abduction, rape and murder of a 12-year-old girl in Baruipur, the police’s initial tardiness, and accusations of political interference on the suspects’ behalf have revived memories of symptoms familiar during Mamata Banerjee’s tenure.
The girl, who had stepped out of home on Saturday afternoon, was found dead around 7.30am on Sunday, stuffed inside a gunny bag dumped in a pond.
Men present when the body was fished out said it bore “bite marks”. The preliminary post-mortem opinion suggested she may have been alive when thrown into the water.
After a storm of protests, the police arrested the main accused and two others on Monday and said they were looking for more suspects.
The Telegraph lists some of the allegations against the police and the scary parallels between the previous and current administrations’ reaction to such crimes.
‘Slow’ police
Several residents of the neighbourhood from where the girl was allegedly kidnapped on Saturday evening said the police “took it lightly” and didn’t do enough to search
for her.
“We (neighbours) ourselves scanned CCTV cameras and searched for her. We even tracked down an accused, and then another,” said Nasiruddin Lashkar.
“The only help we got from the police was that they broke open a suspect’s door at 3am on Sunday after his wife told us he was not home.”
The allegations of police go-slow are sickeningly familiar. The law-keepers’ first reaction to complaints about missing girls has traditionally been lethargic in South 24-Parganas, the district that witnesses the heaviest trafficking of women.
“Whenever we reported a girl missing, the police’s first question would be whether she had a boyfriend,” said Bappaditya Mukherjee of Prantakatha, an NGO working with trafficking victims for over a decade.
“This apathy on the police’s part to trace the girls allows the traffickers the time to escape with the children.”
Another Baruipur resident said that had the police got cracking earlier, the girl “might have been alive today”.
“The police took it very lightly. Maybe we were unable to impress the gravity of the matter on them,” the resident said.
“When one of the suspects was nabbed, he said they had drunk liquor till late Saturday night and committed the crime after 2am on Sunday. Had the police been active since midnight, who knows, the girl might have been alive today.”
This resident was among those who picked the girl up from the pond later on Sunday morning.
“We looked for her through the night. We were doing the police’s job. Only the ‘camp Sir’ (possibly a reference to an officer from the Baruipur outpost) was there. But there was none from the administration,” he alleged.
State home department sources said their preliminary finding was that the Baruipur police outpost had helped the search between Saturday night and Sundaymorning, but the local police station got involved at least three hours after the body had been fished out.
The Baruipur superintendent of police has submitted a report on the incident, they said.
A source said senior home department officials were “not satisfied” with the local police station’s role. The inspector-in-charge allegedly reached the spot around 10.30am on Sunday.
‘Political shield’
A local BJP leader, Santanu Mondal, stands accused of helping a suspect flee.
Residents had got hold of two suspects on Sunday morning and were beating them when Mondal intervened and handed them over to the Baruipur police outpost.
“Of the four constables assigned to the outpost, two had participated in the search. Only the two others were at the outpost when Mondal arrived with the suspects and handed them over,” an officer from the police directorate said.
“The force was outnumbered and the mob started to thrash the men again,alleging the BJP leader was trying to help them. The prime accused, Ananda Sardar, took advantage of the chaos and fled.”
Videos have emerged on social media purportedly showing Mondal rescuing the accused and taking them to the police.
“Santanu Mondal handed over the accused to the police, and one of them fled. He was trying to shield the suspects,” an angry resident said.
The police have detained Mondal since Sunday.
Mondal’s Facebook account identifies him as BJP “general secretary, Baruipur (West), Mandal-III”.
Similar allegations of “shielding the culprits” had been made against the then ruling Trinamool two years ago after the rape and murder of a postgraduate trainee at RG Kar Medical College and Hospital in Calcutta.
Trinamool leaders from North 24-Parganas were accused of rushing her cremation to destroy potential evidence.
Opp shackles
Mamata alleged she had been kept under “house arrest” since Sunday night after she decided to reach out to the girl’s family.
A large team of state police and central forces surrounded the Kalighat homes of Mamata and her No. 2 Abhishek Banerjee on Sunday evening. The deployment was continuing on Monday evening though it had thinned.
A team of Mamata loyalists was stopped multiple times and questioned by the police on Monday as they headed to Baruipur, barely 10km from the city’s southern fringes. The team members were eventually allowed to meet the girl’s family.
Calcutta police commissioner Ajay Nand did not respond to text messages on Sunday or Monday asking why police had suddenly been posted outside the homes of Mamata andAbhishek.
Asked why the Trinamool team was repeatedly halted, officers of Bengal police said this was “done to ensurethat the team did not violate the restrictions” on assemblies imposed in the Sonarpur, Narendrapur and Baruipur police station areas on Monday.
BJP functionaries responded with whataboutery to defend the police action.
“What’s the big deal? We faced this type of situation so many times when they (Trinamool) were in power. They used the police to stop us, be it Kamduni or Sandeshkhali,” a BJP leader from south Calcutta said.
“They stopped us everywhere, citing prohibitory orders or saying our visit would create law-and-order problems.”
Chief minister Suvendu Adhikari said anyone could visit the spot and that he himself would visit Baruipur on Tuesday.