Author: Correspondent
Publication: The Telegraph
Date: January 31, 2007
URL: http://www.telegraphindia.com/1070131/asp/bengal/story_7329585.asp
Introduction: Police station doesn't lodge
an FIR or start probe in a week
A gang of five raped two tribal teenagers
of the same family holding their relatives at gunpoint in a Murshidabad village
last week.
When the elders in the family went to lodge
a complaint with Nabagram police station, the officers registered a general
diary, not an FIR.
The police are under no obligation to begin
a probe if a general diary is lodged and the Nabagram personnel did not start
one. There was no attempt to send the two victims to a hospital for medical
examination, which is statutory in case of a rape complaint.
Murshidabad superintendent of police Shankar
Chakraborty came to know about the incident at Saoradanga, about 225 km from
Calcutta, today. "I have asked the local police station to treat the
complaint as an FIR and start a rape case immediately. Subdivisional police
officer Ashesh Roy will inquire into why the investigation was not started
earlier," he said.
The tribal family lives in separate huts on
one plot in tribal-dominated Saoradanga.
On the night of January 24, eight armed miscreants
raided three huts. They dragged all 13 family members out to a field, about
300 metres away, and beat them up. Then they made them squat and pulled away
19-year-old housewife Annapurna Maddi and her sister-in-law Sabita, 16 (names
changed), further away. Five men took turns to rape them as the others held
the girls' families at gunpoint.
When Annapurna's husband Dilip and his mother
Mungli tried to resist, they were thrashed severely and revolvers were pressed
against their heads.
"One of them (miscreants) held a revolver
against my head. I watched helplessly as they raped my wife and sister,"
said Dilip.
Sabita is a candidate for this year's Madhyamik.
Dilip said the miscreants looted their belongings
before they left. But they had apparently not come to commit dacoity. It could
have been a tactic to scare them away from the plot on which his family had
been living for 40 years. "A villager recently purchased the land. He
wants us to flee the place," Dilip added.
The owner of the plot, Lulu Sheikh, denied
the allegation. "I have no intention to evict Dilip and his family. They
live in one corner of the 12-bigha plot and do not come in the way of cultivation,"
he said.
A local adivasi organisation has planned a
procession to the Nabagram police station on November 10 to protest against
the police's attitude towards tribals' complaints.
Snubbed by their boss, officers at the police
station refused to speak.
