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Bengal govt sets up 8-member SIT led by SP to probe Joynagar rape, murder

KOLKATA: The West Bengal government on Tuesday formed an eight-member special investigation team (SIT) to probe the October 4 rape and murder of a nine-year-old girl in the Joynagar area of South 24 Parganas district, state officials said.
The SIT, which will be headed by Baruipur superintendent of police (SP) Palash Chandra Dhali, has been set up to assure people that the government was serious about ensuring punishment to the guilty in this case, officials said amid continuing protests at Kultali in Joynagar area.
The prime suspect, Mostakin Sardar, 18, was arrested at 3 am on October 5, hours after the body of the Class 4 student was recovered from a pond in Kultali.
On Tuesday, a day after the victim’s body was handed to her family following a post-mortem, local people set up roadblocks and stopped the police from entering the area.
A police team led by Atish Biswas, the sub-divisional police officer (SDPO) of Baruipur, was also stopped from taking an ailing female police personnel to the hospital and a police vehicle was ransacked. The agitation continued on Tuesday evening
The last rites of the victim were not performed till Tuesday evening while the agitation continued.
The villagers, who attacked the police on October 5 and tried to set the local Mahishmari police outpost on fire, stopped Pratima Mondal, the local Trinamool Congress Lok Sabha member, from meeting the girl’s family on Tuesday.
“I cannot understand why they are stopping me. I have come alone,” Mondal, who faced a similar resistance on October 5, told the media as villagers shouted slogans.
Police said action will be taken against villagers who violated the law and damaged government property.
“We did not use any force to remove the agitators who blocked roads because we know they are aggrieved. But ransacking police vehicles will not be tolerated,” the SDPO said. The villagers cleared the roads after some of them were detained.
Meanwhile, the Calcutta high court expressed dissatisfaction on Tuesday with the infrastructure at AIIMS, Kalyani in Nadia district where the post-mortem was supposed to have taken place on Monday.
After hearing separate petitions filed by the district police and the victim’s parents, who did not want any state institution to be part of the investigation, a bench of justice Tirthankar Ghosh ordered on Sunday that the autopsy be done at AIIMS, Kalyani.
When the AIIMS hospital authorities pointed out that it was a new project and the infrastructure at the anatomy department might not be adequate, the court said the doctors could use the facility at Kalyani’s state-run Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Hospital. The court ordered the state to file a compliance report on Tuesday.
The post-mortem was done at Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Hospital on Monday.
“During Tuesday’s hearing on the compliance report, the judge expressed dissatisfaction with the infrastructure at AIIMS, Kalyani. He ordered the hospital to be completely operational by December 31, 2025,” a lawyer who was present at the hearing said.
The court-monitored autopsy indicated on Monday that the minor was strangled, police officials said.
Her parents were present during the post-mortem which was recorded on video as directed by the court. The body was brought back to Joynagar late on Monday evening.

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