June 18: The youth who was arrested from Sealdah station last night is suspected to have raped a septuagenarian nun at a Ranaghat convent in March, CID officers said this afternoon.

CID sources said the five other suspects arrested in the rape-and-robbery case had said during individual interrogations that Nazrul Islam alias Nozu had raped the nun.

"We have finally managed to catch the suspected rapist. Nazrul was in Bangladesh and had sneaked into India yesterday as police in the neighbouring country were after him. He crossed the border at Petrapole in North 24-Parganas, boarded a local train from Bongaon station and reached Sealdah. We had a specific tip-off and our officers rounded him up," said Chirantan Nag, CID special superintendent.

According to CID sources, the nun had said in her statement to the police that one of the assailants who had raided Convent of Jesus and Mary High School on the night of March 14 had raped her.

"The arrested suspects other than Nazrul have corroborated the nun's statement. They disclosed Nazrul's name while being interrogated separately," a CID officer said.

The police said Nazrul, whose face had been captured by CCTV cameras at the school, had received a part of the money that was looted from the office room. He was produced in a Ranaghat court today and remanded in police custody for 14 days.

During the interrogation, Nazrul told the CID that the gang had split up into groups. "He said he fled to Bangladesh a day after the incident. He told us he had gone to his ancestral home at Bejpara under Kotwali police station in Jessore," a CID source said.

Once the identities of the attackers were established, the CID had informed Bangladesh police and given them copies of the CCTV images.

"Nazrul fled home after coming to know that Bangladesh police were after him. He hid in several places in Bangladesh. When it became difficult for him to stay in Bangladesh because the police were hot on his pursuit, he came to Calcutta," said Nag, the CID special superintendent.

With Nazrul's arrest, the total number of suspects who have been rounded up in connection with the rape and robbery has gone up to six. The police are looking for four more suspects.

The CID would soon seek court permission to obtain DNA samples of all the six arrested suspects to match them with the semen found on the bed where the nun was raped.