Ransack after girl death - Police say youth admitted to killing girl after tiff

The ransacked house. Picture by Nantu Dey

TT, Raiganj, July 19: The house of a youth was ransacked by a mob after the body of a 17-year-old girl was found on the banks of the Kulik river today.

Police sources said Samed Ali, 23, arrested today, had told them he had throttled the girl to death and dumped the body in the river with the help of two friends. The youth's father and brother have fled.

Raiganj police station sources said the girl, a Class VIII student, had been missing since Friday. That night, her father lodged a missing complaint with the local police outpost.

Today around 6am, the girl's body was seen in the river, around 9km from her house.

Today, 500-odd people went to Samed's house and broke the tin walls and threw the belongings. "Yesterday, villagers told me they had seen my daughter with Samed. When we went to his house, he denied having seen her. I spoke to a woman farm labourer engaged by Samed and she said she had seen my daughter talking to him," said the girl's father, a farmer.

Samed had been detained by the police yesterday.

Samed said, on Friday as he was overseeing planting of seedlings, he saw the girl and told her to take food to the labourers. "She refused and started abusing me. I lost my temper and thrashed her. I was afraid that she would complain and I would get a beating. I dragged her to a jute field. There, my friends Haider and Faruq, were sitting. We gagged her with her dupatta. They held her to the ground and I throttled her with jute stalks."

Gautam Chakrabarty, inspector in-charge of Raiganj police station, said: "Samed used to bother the girl with proposals that she had been rejecting. We are looking for the two youths."