Police shoot dead Baruipur gang-rape accused in encounter
The Suvendu Adhikari Government tended to walk its talk — against sexual attacks on women — dealing out on Wednesday the ‘encounter treatment’ for Probhash Mondal, the prime accused in the Baruipur gangrape and murder case, even as he “tried to snatch a gun from the policemen, open fire and flee” before being shot dead.
“As he was continuously changing his statements, the police team was taking him to the place of occurrence for reconstruction of the crime situation, when he suddenly snatched a gun from a policeman and opened fire… the accompanying policemen immediately fired back in self-defence, hitting him in the chest and abdomen,” a senior police officer said.
While Wednesdays was the first death in police firing after many years, perhaps after the Naxalite movement of the seventies, residents of Baruipur and the family members of the victim received the news contently.
“We have complete faith in Chief Minister Suvendu Babu …he told us the other day that he will not spare the guilty and give a lesson that would be remembered by the future criminals. We are satisfied that at least one of them has been treated befittingly, as instead of repenting he was shamelessly attacking the police men,” the brother of the victim said.
A 12-year-old girl was waylaid last Saturday by a gang of 5-6 youths at Baruipur, a suburban town south of Kolkata. She was then gangraped and brutally assaulted with several hits on her head. To ensure death, she was stuffed in a gunny bag and thrown into a pond so that she died from drowning. Her postmortem reports confirmed lethal ante mortem injuries and death by drowning.
The incident triggered widespread outrage, with angry locals blocking the Baruipur-Joynagar Road, setting tyres ablaze and vandalising police vehicles, demanding immediate arrest and stringent punishment for those responsible.
Incidentally, Adhikari, as an Opposition Leader during one of his campaigns, said that the BJP Government would teach the ultimate lesson to all the rapists, adding, “We ‘deposit’ them in the morning and ‘spend’ them in the evening before producing them in the court.”
Meanwhile, senior Congress leader Adhir Chowdhury and TMC leader Mohua Moitra attacked the powers that be in the State for converting Bengal “officially into UP 2.0.”
“Isn’t it strange that the prime accused and the only witness in the rape and murder case has been shot dead in an alleged encounter… with him, much information may have gone forever… it is a bloodthirsty day… for the first time in Bengal we have seen an encounter killing. Bengal has officially become UP 2.0,” she said, wondering why the police could not aim at the feet, which was the standard rule.
Chowdhury too expressed doubts at the creditworthiness of the police, saying, “the same man … apparently a drug addict … was shown been caught and dragged by a local man to the police station and the same man gathered so much strength and courage to snatch a gun from so many armed policemen … if that be so then what is the efficiency of the police today.”
