The residents of Kamduni in West Bengal’s North 24 Parganas district started a sit-in demonstration on Friday protesting the Calcutta high court’s October 6 order which set aside death sentences for three of the six convicts in the 2013 gang rape and murder of a 20-year-old college student in the village.
The dharna started a day after the Supreme Court heard separate petitions filed by the Bengal government and the victim’s family challenging the high court verdict and ordered that the acquitted persons, who are all residents of Kamduni, cannot relocate to any other place till the case is not heard.
Mousumi Koyal and Tumpa Koyal, close friends of the victim who led a people’s movement 10 years ago, led Friday’s dharna.
“We are all looking up to the Supreme Court because the state government did nothing for us. Justice was not delivered,” Mousumi said.
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Shankudeb Panda also took part in the dharna.
The Kamduni crime triggered an uproar in Bengal a decade ago and had strong resemblance to the 2012 gang rape of a young woman inside a bus in Delhi.
On June 7, 2013, the victim, who was a second-year under-graduate student, was returning home in the evening after appearing for her college exams. She was walking alone from Kamduni railway station when a group of people abducted her. The victim’s mutilated body was found by local people the next morning.
{{/usCountry}}On June 7, 2013, the victim, who was a second-year under-graduate student, was returning home in the evening after appearing for her college exams. She was walking alone from Kamduni railway station when a group of people abducted her. The victim’s mutilated body was found by local people the next morning.
{{/usCountry}}The state’s criminal investigation department (CID) probed the crime. Three people were sentenced to death and three sent to 10-year imprisonment in 2016 by a trial court. The punishments were challenged by the convicts in the high court.
On October 6, the division bench of justices Joymalya Bagchi and Ajay Kumar Gupta turned the death sentences faced by Saiful Ali and Ansar Ali into life imprisonment and acquitted Amin Ali, who, too, faced death sentence, citing lack of evidence. HT saw a copy of the order.
Three other convicts – Sheikh Imanul Islam, Aminur Islam and Bhola Naskar - who were sentenced to 10 years of imprisonment, were released as they had already served the period behind bars.
Before moving the Supreme Court, Kamduni residents took out a procession in Kolkata on October 10. Leaders from the Left and Congress took part in it.