In a chilling incident near Kolkata, a 16-year-old schoolgirl was stabbed to death in Howrah, allegedly by a man who had been stalking her despite the teenager spurning his advances. The Class 10 student was followed and attacked while she was returning home on a bicycle around 7.00 pm on Wednesday.
According to police and eyewitnesses, 24-year-old Samir Das stabbed her multiple times in the neck, hands, and stomach.
“The girl was cycling back from her tuition class when the youth suddenly blocked her path. Before anyone could react, he pulled out a knife and began stabbing her indiscriminately. She collapsed on the road,” said a police officer.
Enraged bystanders overpowered the accused and thrashed him severely before handing him over to the nearest police station. The teenager was rushed to a private hospital and later shifted to the Howrah district hospital, where she succumbed to injuries late at night.
Das, a resident of Murshidabad in north Bengal who works at a factory in Howrah, had been pursuing the 16-year-old for a long time, police have said. Preliminary interrogation reveals that the crime was a retaliatory act after the teenager repeatedly rejected his proposals. “We have taken the accused into custody, and a murder investigation is underway,” a senior police officer said. The attacker remains hospitalised under strict police watch.
This comes after the gruesome gangrape and murder of an 11-year-old in Baruipur near Kolkata. Prabhash Mondol, an accused in the case, was killed in an encounter when he snatched a policeman’s firearm during the reconstruction of the crime.
The murder in Howrah also comes days after a woman was murdered in Sodepur in Bengal’s North 24 Parganas district. Subhas Das murdered his estranged wife, Geeta Das, in broad daylight. After the attack, Subhas stabbed himself in a suicide attempt and suffered serious injuries.
The back-to-back crimes against women have put the Suvendu Adhikari-led BJP government in a spot months after the party came to power after defeating the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress in the state polls in May.
Amid growing outrage over the crimes, Kolkata Police have rolled out a five-point Standard Operating Procedure to eliminate “administrative reluctance” and systemic delays in handling Zero FIRs. A Zero FIR is a case that can be filed at any police station in the country regardless of where the crime took place.
Under the new directive, the Officer-in-Charge who registers a Zero FIR must personally coordinate a seamless case transfer with their counterpart at the station concerned, providing relevant facts and the complainant’s contact details. “It has been observed that there is an inordinate delay in filing of FIR after registration of Zero FIR within the jurisdiction of Kolkata Police as well as neighbouring districts. Such delays adversely impact the timely disposal of criminal cases and the effective administration of criminal justice,” the order said.