BJP team likely to submit report on alleged gang-rape after Bengal visit
The state’s ruling TMC has questioned the need for BJP’s fact-finding when the CBI is looking into the matter
Kolkata: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s fact-finding team, which visited West Bengal’s Nadia to look into the alleged rape of a girl who died a day after she was allegedly sexually assaulted, is likely to submit a report to the party chief JP Nadda on Wednesday.
The team, which included Member of Parliament Rekha Verma, visited the girl’s village on Friday last. The Central Bureau of Investigation is probing the case on the Calcutta high court’s orders.
The girl’s family alleged she was gang-raped on April 4 and hurriedly cremated without a post-mortem. They have named a ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) leader’s son, who has been arrested along with a friend, as the main accused. The CBI has arrested a third accused in the case.
The 14-year-old returned home late at night from a birthday party hosted by the TMC leader’s son on April 4 and died the next day apparently due to excessive bleeding.
On April 10, the girl’s family lodged a police complaint against the TMC leader’s son, alleging rape. Local residents and the girl’s family told police she was forced to drink alcohol before she was allegedly raped
TMC leader Kunal Ghosh questioned the need for BJP’s fact-finding team when the CBI was already probing into it. “It seems the BJP has no faith in CBI because the truth may come out if a fair probe is done. The fact-finding team actually wants to influence the investigation. What the BJP is doing is plain politics; crude and disgraceful.”
The BJP earlier sent another fact-finding team to Bengal to look into the massacre of nine people following a TMC panchayat leader’s murder in Birbhum on March 21. The report named another TMC leader.
Chief minister Mamata Banerjee rejected the report on the Birbhum violence saying it will influence the CBI probe into the massacre and derail it. Nine people died in an arson attack in Birbhum in the aftermath of the murder.
TMC has repeatedly accused the BJP-led Centre of interferences in Bengal and misusing central agencies against the state government.
