Bolpur tense after rape and murder of a class 5 girl

HT, 2 June 2016,BOLPUR: Within a few hours after a PhD student of Visva-Bharati was awarded life term for raping and blackmailing a minor girl by a court in Birbhum, a class 5 student was raped and murdered in Birbhum on Thursday night. 
The incident took place in Rambhadrapur village of Tarapith police station area. A CID team has rushed to the spot after chief minister Mamata Banerjee ordered an investigation into the matter.

Family members of the victim have lodged a complaint against unknown persons with the local police station. Cops sent a police dog from Berhampore for investigating the case. The incident triggered a heated altercation between the locals and the cops.

Sources said that the victim was a 10-year-old girl of a class 5 who studied at Bosowa High School. She was allegedly raped and murdered by unknown persons on Thursday night. The cops, who were trying to recover the dead body, had to face the anger of locals, who demanded the immediate arrest of the culprits.

The victim, who used to stay at a school hostel, returned home for summer vacation two weeks ago. She was sleeping in the veranda of her house to avoid the scorching heat.

"Around 1 am in the night, I found that she was not beside me. I thought she might be in the toilet. After a long time, when she didn't return, I called my son and raised an alarm in our area," said the grandmother of the victim.

Villagers immediately began looking for the small girl. A daily wage earner and the father of the victim, and other villagers rushed to the mosque. They pleaded for help to find the missing girl.

Around 3 am, her half-naked body was recovered from a thatched-roofed hut, inside an agricultural field. The place was used to operate shallow pump for agriculture.

"We found her half-naked body. The lower portion of her body was covered with a jute bag and paddy straw was pushed into her mouth," said a local villager.

When the police reached the spot from Tarapith, angry villagers stopped the police, demanding immediate arrest of the culprits.

Rampurhat SDPO Kamal Bairagya with a police team reached the spot to bring the situation under control. A preliminary investigation revealed she was murdered elsewhere and dumped inside the hut. "We are waiting for the post mortem report that will verify the case,” Kamal Bairagya, SDPO, Rampurhat, said.