THE ACCUSED

The girl was wearing a half-pant and was smoking openly.... Can you imagine?

That was the defence of a man who led the assault on the Presidency University student for wearing shorts and smoking on Friday night.

Police haven't been able to find the main accused in the Ranikuthi incident in more than 48 hours, but Shouvik Ganguly, one of the six who allegedly marshalled the moral police against the girl, spoke to Metro over the phone "from Digha". The group of six allegedly owes allegiance to Trinamul minister and Tollygunge candidate Aroop Biswas.

Shouvik's 70-year-old father, too, was among the assaulters and his mother finds nothing wrong in what they did. "Can you imagine? These girls... they smoke and they are scantily dressed.... Chokhe dekha jaina (Unbearable to watch)," she told Metro.

On Sunday morning, accounts from multiple witnesses and local residents led Metro to three men who identified Shouvik and his father Kamal Ganguly as leaders of the assault. The Ganguly house, opposite Netaji Nagar College, around 500 metres from where the girl had been attacked, was locked.

Shouvik took the call after several failed attempts to reach him, and said he was "holidaying with his family" since Saturday morning. That means he left home at least 12 hours after the assault.

Did you and your father harass any girl on Friday, Metro asked him.

"The girl was wearing a half-pant and was smoking openly. How could she do that? My father got angry and asked her to throw away the cigarette but she began arguing with him," Shouvik shot back.

"In our area, girls do not to smoke or wear short dresses, and are supposed to respect elders. This is not a Park Street or Jadavpur University where you can do anything. In respectable colonies like ours such indecencies are not allowed," said Shouvik, 37, who is into construction.

Hadn't the police contacted him and asked him about the assault? "You are the first one to tell me that the girl has lodged a police complaint," Shouvik told this paper.

Shouvik and his father Kamal Ganguly are both known Trinamul Congress activists in the area. They were returning home from a campaign meeting for Aroop Biswas at Pallisree, a neighbourhood sandwiched between Netaji Nagar and Bijoygarh, when the incident occurred.

Minister Biswas said he did not know any of the accused. "I have heard there was a problem between a young girl and an old man and his son. There is no political involvement," he said.

Kamal Ganguly could not be contacted despite repeated attempts.

The Rescuer's regret

If the college student who was assaulted is living in fear, so is a man who had stepped in to rescue her. Following a phone call from a Trinamul leader, the local resident, in his early 40s, is keen to distance himself from the incident. He described to Metro - on condition of anonymity - how he had rescued the woman and why The Party is making him regret that.

I just could not watch the girl being harassed and molested by a crowd in front of my eyes so I jumped in to help her on Friday.

But on Saturday, a Trinamul leader called me up, asked me a number of questions about what had happened and why I had intervened.

The call has made me wary, because I have to live in the area with my family.

On Friday, I was at a stationery shop at Pallisree when I heard a girl screaming and saw her surrounded by a group of men. I could see Kamalda, a senior resident of Pallisree who has now shifted to Netaji Nagar, in the forefront.

I walked up and was stunned to find that a group of men were harassing the girl only because she was smoking. I tried to stop them but they did not listen to me.

Suddenly, Kamalda slapped the boy accompanying the girl and when the girl tried to save him two others began pushing her away. The crowd around them was growing but no one was protesting.

I realised that if I could not get the girl and the boy out of the mob, something terrible could happen. I just held the boy by his wrist and dragged them out of the crowd.

As Kamalda and his son (Shouvik) began arguing with me on why I was interfering and that the girl should apologies for smoking in public, I gestured at the boy and girl to just walk away from the place.

I tried to reason with the crowd that their act could invite a police case but they continued to argue with me.

When I realised that the girl and the boy had left, I also left the argument and walked back home.