8 held for gang rape of newly wed woman on Kanchrapara rail tracks
Times of India | 31 October 2024
Kalyani/Kolkata: Eight men were arrested on Wednesday for allegedly gang-raping a 19-year-old newly married woman and assaulting her husband on the railway tracks near Kanchrapara station in the early hours of the day.
According to police, the young couple was thrown out by their relatives who did not approve of their marriage and so had decided to spend the night at Kanchrapara station. However, they were evicted from the station by railway officials for not having platform tickets or any valid reason for spending the night there.
The couple was walking along the railway tracks and had reached Kanchrapara railway overbridge on Kalyani Barrackpore Expressway when they were spotted by some local youths and waylaid between 4 am and 5 am. The woman was dragged to a bush beside the track and gang-raped while the husband was assaulted. The accused fled the spot an hour later.
The woman filed a complaint at Kalyani police station, following which police began an investigation. Four of the accused were nabbed within a couple of hours and by noon all eight had been rounded up and arrested. All of them are residents of Kanchrapara and are daily wage earners. The survivor and her husband, also have no fixed income, are residents of Kalyani.
Siddharth Dhapola, additional superintendent of police (headquarters) of Ranaghat police district, said, "Eight people have been arrested. They are being questioned to establish the circumstances of the case and to find out if anyone else was involved." The accused were produced in court and remanded in police custody for 14 days. A Test Identification (TI) parade of the accused will be held on Nov 4. An officer at Bhabani Bhawan said police would pray for custodial trial of the accused after filing a chargesheet.
The investigation so far has revealed that the gang rape took place between 4.30 am and 5.30 am. "Their families did not accept the marriage. It seems this was the reason why the couple left home and chose to stay the night at a public place and came to the railway station at night. The accused were not known to them," a police source said.
Cops said a medical examination of the survivor had been conducted and forensic experts were being consulted. On Wednesday, a team of three forensic experts visited the crime scene and collected samples. Forensic expert Sandeep Ghosh said, "Samples have been collected from the crime scene based on the gang rape allegation and will be sent to a lab for testing."