In a spine-chilling recollection of 2011 Park Street gangrape that hit the national headlines a 12-year-old girl was forcibly picked up in a Ola cab, repeatedly gangraped, murdered and then thrown into a sewage canal.
The horror story took shape in the wee hours of Wednesday when the two men abducted the little girl. However, police quickly swung into action, trailed the CCTV footages, identified the vehicle number and arrested the felons — Ola driver Shankar Shaw and his crony Guddu Singh said.
The victim’s body was fished out by police divers on Wednesday noon after the culprits identified the place on Ambedkar Bridge at Topsia in south-central Kolkata from where they had thrown her corpse into the sewage canal.
The girl a pavement dweller at Brabourne Road was picked up in the Ola cab and raped by the culprits even as they drove the vehicle to various locations before finally driving up to the Park Circus flyover where they stopped and strangulated her apparently to erase evidence.
“She was abducted at about 3.30 am” the girl’s sister Shanti Rai said while her brother Sibu Das said they did not know the drivers.
“After killing her they drove the body to Ambedkar bridge at Tapsia and dropped her in the canal,” a senior officer said adding the criminals are the residents of Watgunge area.
“The police acted promptly and silently so as to deprive them time for fleeing,” officers said adding the whole case was cracked within a few hours time with the help of CCTV links.
DCP Central Division Akhilesh Chaturvedi said “the body of the girl has been recovered and complaints registered.” The police have lodged charges of rape, murder criminal, conspiracy and abduction.
The rape-and-murder brings back to memory the gruesome rape of a middle-aged woman inside a moving vehicle in 2011. The worst part of it was she was raped and then thrown out of the car. The incident hit the national headlines after Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee went into a denial mode calling the incident as “sajano ghatana” (stage managed) blaming the Opposition for tyring to defame her Government.
One of her MPs later said the matter was not of a rape but of an “issue between a woman and her client.” Notwithstanding a Damayanti Sen a senior IPS officer in charge of investigation finally managed to crack the case and catch the culprits.
With Bengal fast earning a place in atrocities against women a IT employee was picked up in a moving SUV on March 31 and gangraped. Her tormentors however did not murder her.