A team of leaders owing allegiance to the Mamata Banerjee faction of the Trinamool Congress on Monday visited the family of the 11-year-old girl who was allegedly raped and killed in Baruipur in West Bengal's South 24 Parganas district, amid prohibitory orders clamped in the region. The team, comprising former assembly speaker and local MLA Biman Banerjee, Rajya Sabha MP Dola Sen and Joynagar MP Pratima Mondal, among others, met the victim’s father and mother separately and assured them of legal and other forms of assistance by the party. “We came here as representatives of Mamata Banerjee and met the victim’s father at his Baruipur residence and her mother and other family members at their ancestral village house a little further away. We have assured them that Mamata Banerjee stands firmly with the family and will extend all assistance the family requires,” Sen told reporters after the visit.
The team held a meeting at Banerjee's Kalighat residence in southern Kolkata before leaving for Baruipur, around 25 km from the city. On Sunday night, the TMC alleged that barricades were erected and there was heavy police deployment outside the former chief minister's residence to prevent her from visiting the victim's family. TMC's Baruipur Dakshin MLA Biman Banerjee said, "Police should have been proactive in tracing the criminals. The locals had no choice but to resort to protests, and it was spontaneous." It was unfortunate that Mamata Banerjee was stopped from visiting the victim's family, he said and termed it an attempt to throttle people's voice. “Our visit to the victim’s family wasn’t without hurdles. The police stopped us at multiple locations and searched our cars to determine whether Mamata Banerjee was travelling with us,” he alleged.
Baruipur remained tense on Monday, a day after locals held a protest demanding the arrest of the accused. The demonstration had escalated to brickbatting, during which a major road was blocked, tyres were burnt and police vehicles vandalised. The body of the girl, stuffed in a sack, was fished out from a pond on Sunday, following which a mob lynched a man for his alleged involvement in her rape and murder.
Police clamped prohibitory orders under Section 163 of the BNSS in Baruipur and its adjacent Narendrapur and Sonarpur police station areas in the aftermath of Sunday's violence and deployed heavy security. The state government has constituted a six-member Special Investigation Team (SIT), headed by the local additional superintendent of police, to probe the crime. While two suspects were arrested following overnight search operations and three others detained for questioning, the prime accused in the case -- Ananda Sardar -- was held on Monday, police said. Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari said in Kolkata that his government will ensure the girl's family gets justice and the perpetrators of the brutal crime are hanged. "It's a crime of unspeakable horror. I have spoken to the parents of the victim, and the government is doing everything that the family has asked for. They will get justice, and the criminals will get capital punishment. I am happy that the family has reposed its trust in the government," he said.
Adhikari added that besides the main crime, three cases have also been lodged in connection with the violence that followed. "There was an incident of mob lynching with a communal angle to it. Railway tracks were damaged, bringing back memories of the 2019 anti-CAA protests and the more recent anti-Waqf Act protest. Apart from these, two CRPF jawans were assaulted, and a police vehicle was torched," the CM said. "We will surely provide justice to the family. But we will also make those frustrated souls, who locked themselves up in their rooms after getting defeated in the elections and who orchestrated the violence, suffer beyond their imagination," he warned, obliquely referring to local TMC leaders suspected of taking part in Sunday's unrest.
Rejecting the CM's claims, delegation member Pratima Mondal alleged that deliberate attempts were being made by the ruling dispensation to malign the TMC and asserted that the party indulged in no communal provocation during the protests. "We understand that the government will try to malign us since we are in the opposition. Today, we created no stir or raised anti-government slogans while meeting the victim's family; we only assured them of our assistance," Mondal said.
Commenting on the incident, BJP MLA and the RG Kar hospital rape-murder victim's mother Ratna Debnath claimed that such crimes were the result of corruption during the previous TMC government. "It breaks my heart to learn that people can stoop so low and get rid of their sensibilities. I urge the government to tackle such crimes with an iron hand and believe that the police will conduct a proper inquiry in the case," she said. The victim's family has alleged that the girl was murdered. The body was sent for post-mortem, which confirmed sexual assault, head injuries, and ante-mortem drowning. According to the post-mortem report, the cause of death was a combination of head injuries and drowning.