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TMC panchayat leader, friend held by CBI in Bengal’s Hanskhali gang rape
The alleged gang rape took place on the night of April 4 at the TMC panchayat leader’s home. The victim, a class 9 student, was invited by Brajagopal to his birthday party. She died the next morning, allegedly due to excessive bleeding.
Kolkata: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Friday arrested Trinamool Congress (TMC) panchayat leader Samarendra Gayali and his friend Pijush Bhakta on charges of suppressing evidence after a 14-year-old girl died on April 5 following an alleged gang rape at Hanskhali in Bengal’s Nadia district, officials aware of the development said.
Samarendra Gayali’s son, Brajagopal, and his friend Prabhakar Poddar were arrested by the state police when the probe started. Another friend of Brajagopal, Ranjit Mullick, was later nabbed by the CBI on April 24. The CBI arrested three more suspects, Surajit Roy, Akash Garai and Dipto Gayali, on charges of destroying evidence and threatening the victim’s family.
The alleged gang rape took place on the night of April 4 at the TMC panchayat leader’s home. The victim, a class 9 student, was invited by Brajagopal to his birthday party. She died the next morning, allegedly due to excessive bleeding.
The number of arrests in this case has gone up to eight, of which six have been made by the CBI which was asked to take over the investigation by the division bench of Calcutta high court chief justice Prakash Srivastava and justice Rajarshi Bharadwaj on April 12.
The victim’s parents alleged that she was forced to drink alcohol before being raped. Her father also alleged that Brajagopal forcefully cremated the body and threatened to kill him if he informed the police.
Samarendra Gayali was arrested after hours of interrogation during which he claimed to have no knowledge of the crime, a CBI official said on condition of anonymity.
The victim was cremated without any death certificate and post mortem.
“Brajagopal Gayali held a gun to my chest and took away my daughter’s body to cremate her within an hour of her death. They did not even let me leave the house,” the victim’s father told the media after the crime.
On April 20, the division bench allowed the minor’s family to seek protection from the state government under the Witness Protection Scheme, 2018. The court also asked the government to provide psychiatric therapy for the family so that the members may recover from the trauma.
Reacting to Samarendra Gayali’s arrest, TMC state general secretary Kunal Ghosh said: “We don’t want to comment on the CBI investigation but the state police could have arrested the panchayat leader as well if it was allowed to continue its probe. These investigations take time. Even the CBI took time.”
The Hanskhali incident has rocked the state. A fact-finding team formed by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) national president J P Nadda visited Hanskhali and submitted its report to him last week. It suggested that that the victim might have been burnt alive since no doctor had examined her or declared her dead.
Bengal BJP’s chief spokesperson Samik Bhattacharya said on Friday that Samarendra Gayali’s arrest has proved that political influence was used to cover up the crime.
“We are confident that the CBI will get to the bottom of the case and justice will be delivered,” said Bhattacharya.
Bengal Congress president Adhir Ranjan Bhattacharya drew a comparison between the Hanskhali crime and the 2020 Hathras incident in BJP-ruled Uttar Pradesh in which a gang rape victim’s body was allegedly cremated without the family’s consent.
“The Hanskhali incident is a glaring example of the lawlessness in Bengal. I see no difference between Hanskhali and Hathras. In both cases, the victims were members of Dalit families.”
