Bengal gangrape: Three students suspended, one more arrested

Burdwan, West Bengal: Three third-year students, including a girl, were suspended indefinitely by authorities of the Nazrul Satabarsha Polytechnic College in Burdwan district for their alleged involvement in the gangrape of a first-year student inside the college premises last week.

Acting Principal Abhijit Dutta on Wednesday said Samba Mondal, Avi Ghosh and Shobhana Das were suspended from the college indefinitely for the incident that occurred at the students' union office of the Trinamool Chhatra Parishad.

Meanwhile, Avi, who had been absconding, was arrested on Wednesday evening from his house at Srirampur in neighbouring Hooghly district, said Indranil Kanjilal, ACP (detective department) of the Asansol Durgapur Police Commissionerate.

A team set up by the college to investigate the incident found the three involved in the gangrape. Though the team had summoned the three to appear before it on Tuesday to depose, only Shobhana came, Mr Dutta said.

Samba was still absconding.

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The team found another accused student, Dipak Badyakar, not involved in the incident.

The victim, a first year student of the same department, was allegedly gangraped on October 9 after being given a drink mixed with some drug during a birthday party held at the union office of the college at Rupnarayanpur in Asansol.

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Of the other two accused, a security guard was arrested while Mithilesh Ojha, an outsider and stated to be a close associate of a Trinamool Congress MLA, was absconding.

The college authorities have sent the findings of its probe team to the technical education department that had suspended the erstwhile Principal Rituparna Basu following the incident.

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According to the police complaint by the girl, she was given mango juice mixed with drugs to drink after which she went into a daze. She was then gangraped and photographed with mobile phones by the accused persons.

Two of the accused then took her on a motorcycle and left her outside her home at Chittaranjan where they warned her father not to go to the police or the photographs would be circulated, the complaint said.

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She was admitted to a hospital by her father and after she recovered a complaint was lodged with the police on October 12.