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Nadda forms team to look into alleged gang rape in Bengal

By, Kolkata/new Delhi
Apr 14, 2022 05:17 AM IST

A 14-year-old girl died hours after she returned from a birthday party, where she was given alcohol and then allegedly sexually assaulted

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) chief J P Nadda on Wednesday formed a five-member fact-finding team to look into the alleged gang rape of a 14-year-old girl, who died hours after she returned from a birthday party where the alleged sexual assault took place at Hanskhali in West Bengal’s Nadia district.

(HT PHOTO (Representative))

This comes a day after the Calcutta high court on Tuesday handed over the probe into the matter to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).

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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.

Nadda has asked the team, which includes Member of Parliament Rekha Verma and Uttar Pradesh minister Baby Rani Maurya, to submit a report at the earliest. The team is expected to visit Hanskhali.

Chief minister Mamata Banerjee provoked outrage as she appeared to dismiss the matter as a “love affair”.

The 14-year-old returned home late at night from the birthday party hosted by the TMC leader’s son on April 4 and died the next day apparently due to excessive bleeding. She was cremated in the evening without a death certificate.

On Saturday, 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 said the CBI is probing the matter and questioned the need for BJP’s fact-finding team. “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. Were fact-finding teams formed to probe [rape cases] at Hathras and Unnao [in BJP-ruled Uttar Pradesh]?”

Expelled BJP lawmaker Kuldeep Singh Sengar was in 2020 sentenced to life for raping a girl in Unnao in 2017.

Ghosh called the alleged rape of the Hanskhali girl tragic and added they all condemned it. “Two persons have been arrested. This has nothing to do with politics.”

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.

Banerjee rejected the report, which was submitted to Nadda, on 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.

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