In night-long raids, the police on Monday arrested 10 persons for their alleged involvement in the gangrape of a married woman near City Centre in Durgapur. They were produced in the court and sent to 14 days’ judicial custody by additional chief judicial magistrate Kaustab Mukherjee.
Addressing the media persons, commissioner of police (Durgapur-Asansol) Ajay Kumar Nand said that the police had arrested 10 persons who worked as contract labourers in the Darpan Printing Centre near City Centre for the Sunday night’s gangrape. “We have arrested 10 people of which five have supposedly raped the woman. We are looking for five to six more accused,” he added.
According to the police, most of them accused were residents of two neighbouhoods — Korapara and Bauripara — in Piayla area. They were returning home after completing duty in the press when they saw the victim. They then called some of their friends and subjected the married woman to unspeakable savagery for nearly an hour. All the while, some of their friends kept the husband pinned down.
The Trinamul Congress wasted no time in taking political mileage from the fact that those arrested worked in a printing press where CPI(M) mouthpiece Ganashakti was published. The local Trinamul Congress workers took out a motorcycle rally in Durgapur town and demonstrated outside the Darpan Printing Centre. “Now it has been proved that CPI(M) goons have been committing crimes like rapes to defame Trinamul Congress government,” local leader Raju Chatterjee said.
In Kolkata, state director general of police Naparajit Mukherjee also said that those arrested worked in a press where Ganashakti was printed. When he was asked why he did not name the other newspapers which were also printed there, he lost his cool. Rattled by the bad publicity, editor of Ganashakti Narayan Dutta issued a statement claiming that those arrested had no connection with Ganashakti.