Tutor beaten, paraded with shoes for rape

With soot on the face and slippers strung round the neck, Karmakar being paraded in the village on Friday. Picture by Surajit Roy

TT, Malda, May 3: A mob blackened a private tutor’s face, cut off his hair, beat him up and paraded him through a village near here with slippers strung round his neck this morning for allegedly raping a 14-year-old student at her home.

Before being subjected to the humiliation in public, Chaitanya Karmakar, 24, had been confined to his house all through last night by the villagers. He was arrested by Englishbazar police and charged under Section 375 (rape) of the Indian Penal Code.

The police said Karmakar had raped the girl yesterday morning and he would be produced in court tomorrow.

The father of the victim, who lodged the FIR with the Englishbazar police station today, said the tutor used to come to his home and teach his daughter all the subjects.

“Yesterday, I was away working in Malda and my wife had gone to visit her parents in Chanchal. My daughter was at home with her aunt. The tutor arrived around 8am when my sister had gone to the nearby river to take a bath. Karmakar took her to a room on the first floor of our house and raped her,” the father said in the complaint.

According to the FIR, the incident came to light when the victim’s mother returned home late in the afternoon. The girl was admitted to the Malda Medical College and Hospital around 10 last night.

The neighbours of the girl went to the tutor’s home and kept him confined there throughout the night. This morning, the mob swelled and dragged Karmakar out of the house around 10am.

“The villagers began punching and kicking the tutor and dragged him to a nearby club, where youths snipped off his hair. The mob then took soot from an earthen stove and smeared it on his face. Slippers were strung around his neck and he was paraded all round the village for nearly three hours,” said Ramkrishna Das, a villager.

The crowd swelled to nearly a thousand as people from neighbouring villages came to see.

The police reached the spot around 1pm and took Karmakar away.

The superintendent of police of Malda, Kalyan Mukherjee, said Karmakar usually gave lessons to the girl in the evenings.

“The police are looking into why he had arrived in the morning. The tutor used to take classes for several other girls in the village. A medical test of the victim has been conducted at the medical college. The girl has injuries on the face and parts of her body and it seems that she had tried to resist the rapist,” he said.