Missing teens held in Siliguri

TT, Siliguri, 11 November 2016: The two teenage girls who went missing from the north Calcutta office of an NGO after a 59-year-old caretaker was found murdered last Wednesday were detained at Siliguri and produced before the juvenile justice board on Friday, police said.

Both girls are minors and were spotted near a red-light area in Siliguri by members of a child's rights organisation. The activists handed over the duo from Bongaon in North 24-Parganas to the police.

Investigators said the girls had been detained for allegedly killing Kavita Roy of Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Samity, in whose care the duo had been staying since they were rescued from the Bowbazar red-light area.

"The girls had killed the caretaker so they could flee. They took away two cell phones of the victim and Rs 800," an officer said.

The police had found that the girls had left home last month to meet two boys they had got acquainted with over Facebook. The money they were carrying had got exhausted by the time they reached Sealdah station and they ended up in the Bowbazar red-light area.

The girls were rescued early this month by members of the Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Samity and produced before the child welfare committee as part of the legal procedure involved in rescuing minors.

"After killing the caretaker, the duo boarded a train at Howrah station and got off in Malda, from where they headed for Siliguri," the officer said.

A call one of the girls made to her home using the cell phone of an autorickshaw driver in Siliguri led the cops to conclude that the girls were in the north Bengal town.

On Thursday night, members of an NGO in Siliguri spotted the girls loitering around the red-light area and alerted the local police.

"It is apparent no one was forcing them into prostitution," the officer said. "We will submit a prayer before the juvenile justice board to try the girls under adult laws."

Cyber arrest

Police arrested a 24-year-old man in East Midnapore on Friday on the charge of harassing a teenager in Calcutta. The man had befriended the girl on social media. He recently threatened to post her morphed photographs on her timeline, the police said.

Burglaries

Burglars broke into two mobile phone shops in Rishra early on Friday and fled with 36 phones worth almost Rs 28,000, police said.

Ref News: Dwaipayan Ghosh | TNN | Nov 7, 2016, KOLKATA: Six days after the murder of one of the earliest presidents of the Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Samiti and anti-trafficking crusader Kavita Roy (58) inside her office, the police have not yet been able to trace the two minor girls who had gone missing from the same premises since that day. Even as the police continue to hold them as the main suspects, its information that the two minors had travelled to north Bengal turned out to be a damp squib. Now, the cops insist they have fled to north India but are yet to trace them.

Sources insist that the failure to trace the two girls is a pointer that the cops have wasted their ground sources that had once made their anti-trafficking unit one of the best even a few years ago. Sources say it is difficult to believe that Durbar had not kept the local police informed about the two girls they had rescued almost 24 years ago. "If that is really the case, then local beat officers must be hauled up," claimed a former chief of detective department. Though the two missing girls - who were rescued 24 hours earlier and kept at the 12/5 Neelmani Mitra Road by Durbar - continues to remain untraced, investigators say it is virtually impossible for them to try and attempt a crime so shocking without some internal support. The investigators though are certain that both had concrete knowledge and possibly a direct role in the murder.

Investigators say Kabita had been involved in arguments with the two missing girls - aged 16 - over an alleged telephonic conversation. "We have come to know that one of the girls had tried to call home from the office phone. This had irked Kabita," said an officer. The fact that the balcony door of the second floor was kept open even after 11 pm - a rare scene at the Durbar office - by nerighbours has stuck the investigators as odd. "The two girls might have tried to flee after opening the key doors from inside. But why will they open the almirah doors after the murder and go through their contents before decamping with merely Rs 700 and a mobile phone? After all, the first attempt of any 16 year old would be to escape from the spot at the earliest," claimed an officer.

The cops said they are investigating the background of the two girls.

"So far, we know that both are residents of Bongaon and studied in classes 8 and 9. They had befriended a man who claimed he was from Kashmir. He said he wanted to marry one of them and take them to Gujarat. Another version says the two had come to the city on their own to join the prostitution business. They had taken a Bangaon local and hailed a rickshaw to a lodge near Bowbazar from where Durbar was tipped off. All the angles are being probed," said an investigating officer.