Rape protests rock Alipurduar

One of the accused in the Alipurduar court on Wednesday.

TT, Alipurduar: Protesters hit the streets in Alipurduar town on Wednesday demanding the arrest all those involved in the gang rape of a 16-year-old on Monday.

Hundreds - residents and members of social organisations - held rallies and signed mass petitions demanding exemplary punishment for the accused youths who had assaulted the girl while pinning down a friend who was with her.

Senior police officials said four persons had been arrested and a search was on for another four. All those arrested are aged between 19 and 22 years.

Members of a theatre group staged a street play, condemning the incident. Some of these organisations and also a delegation of the BJP submitted memorandums to the SP. Another group of young girls and boys went to the district magistrate's office and collected signatures as mark of protest.

Protests were also held at the court premises as hundreds of youths surrounded the police vehicle that brought the four suspects. Policemen had to struggle to take out the quartet and get them inside the courtroom as slogans demanding their punishment rented the air.

"We have arrested four youths. Our officers are in search of some others who were involved in the crime of the gang and trying to net two others. In due course, the victim will be taken to a TI (test identification) parade so that she can identify the accused. We would then seek remand of the accused from the court to obtain more information from them," said A. Ravindranath, SP, Alipurduar.

All the four were produced in additional chief judicial magistrate's court here. The court heard the case and ordered them jail custody for 15 days.

On Monday late evening, two youths had raped the girl while others had detained her boyfriend.

"We are in search of those two accused youths and some others," said a police source.

As police started probing the case, they spoke to the girl and her friend. "He gave us important information. Later, we collected photos of youths who live in the locality where the crime happened and showed those to the victim and the boy. They could identify some of them. Meanwhile, our officers had gathered some information based on which, the quartet was arrested," added the source.

Those arrested have been identified as Krishna Singha, Biswajit Das, Sourav Barman and Raj Sinha. All of them are residents of Bholardabri.

The incident that has occurred ahead of the panchayat polls has left Trinamul leaders worried as the BJP has highlighted the issue.

"We condemn such incidents and have asked police officials to arrest all the accused. We will always be with the victim and her family," said Sourav Chakraborty, the Alipurduar MLA, who visited the girl in hospital.