Horror in Hooghly: 4-year-old girl found bleeding near Tarakeshwar railway drain after midnight rape
The Statesman | 9 November 2025
Trigger warning: In a shocking incident, a four-year-old girl was kidnapped from her sleep late Friday night in Tarakeshwar, Hooghly, near Kolkata, and later found severely injured. Police have confirmed the child was sexually abused.
The little girl, who is reportedly part of the Banjara community, had been sleeping on a simple cot under a mosquito net beside her grandmother at a Railway shed. This shed is where the family lives, having lost their homes in recent demolitions.
The family claims the attacker cut through the child’s mosquito net to take her away without making a sound. The grandmother, struggling to hold back tears, recounted the horrifying discovery. “She was sleeping with me. Around 4 am, someone took her away. I didn’t even realise when she was taken,” the grandmother said, pointing to the torn net. “They cut the mosquito net and took her away. She was found naked.”
The child was found the following afternoon in a pool of blood near the Tarakeswar railway high drain.
The victim is now in critical condition and is receiving treatment at Tarakeswar Gramin Hospital. Police have registered a First Information Report (FIR) under the stringent Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act.
However, the handling of the case has drawn sharp political criticism. Suvendu Adhikari, the Leader of Opposition in Bengal, used social media platform X to claim that the police were initially reluctant to register the FIR and were trying to “bury the crime” to protect the state’s law and order image. “A child’s life is shattered, yet the Police are shielding the State’s Fake Law & Order Image, by suppressing the truth,” Adhikari posted.
Reports indicate that the family faced serious difficulty in the initial hours. The family claimed hospital authorities failed to immediately inform the police.