The men accused of raping and murdering college student Shipra Ghosh in Barasat had apparently been waiting half an hour for a woman to pass alone.

Sleuths probing the brutal murder of the second-year student said this on Monday after interrogating prime suspect Ansar Ali and five other accused behind bars.

“The girl’s rape and murder was a cold-blooded crime. The culprits went on a drinking spree and were waiting to pounce on any woman who would be passing by alone. Their act was deliberate,” said an officer of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID), which took over the probe.

The state human rights commission on Monday asked the inspector general of police (south Bengal) to conduct a probe and submit a report within three weeks.

Police on Monday arrested two more suspects, Sheikh Imanul, 28, and Aminur Mollah, 32, taking the number of people behind bars in connection with the case to eight. The six earlier arrested were Ansar Ali, 36; Nur Ali Seikh, 31; Seikh Amin Molla, 35; Saiful Molla, 32; Gopal Naskar, 45; and Bhola Das, 47.

Though residents of the area where the victim lived held police inaction responsible for thriving hooch dens and frequent attacks on women, Banibrata Basu, the additional director general of police (law and order), praised the Barasat police for their prompt action.

“In this case the police have acted quite fast. Nobody can complain of any inaction by the police in this case. Eight persons, including three named in the FIR, have been arrested. One suspect is at large,” Basu said at Writers’. “Police have orders from the highest level to give utmost priority to the case.”

But the confessions of the accused during interrogation at Barasat police station do not corroborate Basu’s claim of strict policing. Instead, they confirm residents’ allegations that the rule of law does not exist in the Kharibari area, where the girl’s ancestral village is located.

“The gang of eight rogues had been drinking hooch since 11am on Friday in a room at a project site where prime suspect Ansar worked as a caretaker. They finished by 2pm,” said a CID officer, quoting the accused. “They kept an eye on the road through a window, waiting for a girl walking alone on the road that connects the Rajarhat-Taki Road with the local BDO office.”

The gang spotted a woman returning home on a bicycle being pedalled by her husband. They let her go. “After a few minutes, they saw three woman walking down the road. They thought it would be risky to accost them,” said the officer.

“It was drizzling and there was hardly anyone on the road. They waited for another 10 minutes and spotted Shipra coming alone. The gang took position behind the iron gate fitted to an 8ft-high wall of the project site.”

The girl was dragged inside as soon as he came in front of the gate. “She was taken inside the room and the youths pressed their hands hard against her mouth so that she could not scream,” said another police officer. “The accused also said they had murdered the girl because she would have identified them.”

Rights group

On Monday, a group of human rights activists squatted for more than an hour on the first floor of Writers’ Buildings, demanding that they be allowed to meet chief minister Mamata Banerjee and hand her a memorandum on the rape and murder.

The police later allowed five of the rights activists to go inside. On reaching the VIP corridor in front of the chief minister’s room, the police told them to hand over the memorandum to the personal secretary to the chief minister. As they refused to do so, the police escorted them out of the VIP zone.

Before leaving, the group left the memorandum with the officer-in-charge of Writers’. “We wanted to hand it over to an elected representative. The chief minister is also the home minister. This was a deputation with regard to law and order,” said rights activist Bolan Gangopadhyay.

PIL

A lawyer moved a public interest litigation in the high court on Monday seeking a probe into the rape and murder by a special investigation team under the judiciary’s supervision. Petitioner Anindya Sunder Das sought an order for a compensation of Rs 50 lakh to Shipra’s family by the state government.

The division bench of Chief Justice Arun Mishra and Justice Joymalya Bagchi would decide on Tuesday whether the petition would be admitted for hearing or not.