The woman who had stepped out of a home on the EM Bypass and was rescued from a relative’s home in Gariahat the next day, was raped, police said quoting a forensic medical report.

“The forensic medical report has confirmed rape. The report suggests that there were signs of violence in her private parts,” an officer of Calcutta police said.

A taxi driver whose white cab the woman had stopped to take a lift, as seen in CCTV footage, was arrested after he purportedly confessed to the crime. A 17-year-old second accused in the case has also been arrested. He, too, has confessed to the crime, the police said.

The woman in her 30s had shifted to a home with her mother two days before the incident. She stepped out of the home late at night and took a lift in a taxi to go to a home to Narendrapur when she was raped, the police said.

The woman was allegedly abandoned at a spot close to an ashram in Narendrapur where some women spotted her and took her to Narendrapur police station.

The police gave the woman new clothes to wear and sent her to a government home. The home officials helped her buy a train ticket and reach Ballygunge station, from where she walked to her aunt’s home in Gariahat. Based on her statement, relatives took her to the police to report the matter.

The police said an undergarment that the woman had been wearing at the time of the assault, and which she said the two accused had removed, had been seized.

The police’s prayer to record the woman’s statement before the magistrate has been granted by the court, sources said. Till the medical report arrived, the case was being built based on the woman’s statements to the police and to her relatives. The police scanned the footage of over 100 CCTV cameras to zero down on the white taxi in which the woman had last been seen.

The car had taken a detour to Narendrapur, where there are no cameras, and it is suspected that the second accused had boarded the vehicle at this time.

The police have reconstructed the incident with the first accused and learned the exact sequence of the events, officers said.