Kolkata:
Kolkata's upscale Park Street witnessed yet another horrific incident when a minor girl was allegedly raped inside a taxi.
Park Street was all lit up for Christmas but that didn't help the 13-year-old pavement dweller. As she walked to a night shelter on Sunday, she was picked up by the taxi driver she vaguely knew. His friend joined him and they allegedly took turns to drive the taxi and rape the girl. The taxi driver has been arrested.
"At 5 pm, I gave her some money and told her to go to the hostel. Instead of going there, she was wandering around. I didn't know. I had gone off to the masjid. The men picked her up," said the girl's mother.
A day before, a 14-year-old was allegedly raped by a farm labourer in Malda who also slashed her throat badly, leaving the girl without a voice. The labourer was arrested after the girl wrote out his name. The doctors are fighting to save the girl's vocal chords.
"On the pretext of buying her a bicycle, the man lured her into an orchard, raped her, then slashed her throat with a sharp iron weapon and left her there thinking she was dead," said Kalyan Mukhopadhyay, Superintendent of Police, Malda. The girl dragged herself to a nearby teashop and indicated she needed help. Locals rushed her to hospital.
Also rushed to hospital on Monday was a 16-year-old daughter of a taxi driver who set herself on fire after being hounded by friends of six men who gang-raped her in October. They wanted her to withdraw her complaint but she refused. The family even moved from Madhyamgram, where she had been raped, to a home near the airport. But the friends of rapists tracked her down and continued to threaten the family. The girl has suffered 65 per cent burns.