Bhubaneswar: Amid outrage over chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s ‘girls should not go out at night’ remarks, the West Bengal police have apprehended the remaining two accused in the alleged gangrape of a second-year medical student from Odisha in Durgapur, taking the total number of arrests in the case to five on Monday.
A temporary worker at Durgapur Municipal Corporation, Sheikh Nasiruddin, was nabbed last night, while Sheikh Safiqul, a local resident, was caught hiding at a relative’s house in the area. They will be produced in Durgapur Sub-Divisional Court later in the day, where the police will seek his custody, the IANS reported.
The police had registered an FIR against five persons in connection with the incident, which has sparked fresh row between the two states.
On Sunday, three accused — Sheikh Reajuddin (31), Firdos Sheikh (23), and Apu Bauri (21)– were arrested and sent to 10 days’ police custody. All those arrested in the Durgapur incident will undergo a DNA test. The investigators are also planning to interrogate them together and conduct a crime scene reconstruction in the forested area where the incident took place.
At the same time, the male friend of the medical student with whom she went out that fateful night is also being questioned by the officers, the news agency added, quoting police.
The 23-year-old medical student from Jaleswar was allegedly gangraped near a private medical college in Durgapur in Paschim Bardhaman district of West Bengal on Friday shortly after she stepped out of the campus for dinner with a male classmate at around 8 pm.
Meanwhile, tension ran high on the Durgapur IQ City Hospital campus as hundreds of parents and students staged a protest against the ghastly incident. They also opposed the Bengal CM’s alleged insensitive remarks on women safety.
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State LoP Suvendu Adhikari also reached the BJP dharna site at Durgapur City Centre along with the father of the gang rape survivor, shouting ‘Shame on Mamata’.
The father of the 23-year-old woman had earlier appealed to the Odisha government to shift his daughter to Bhubaneshwar, citing a threat to her life. “I appeal to Chief Minister Mohan Charan Majhi to help shift my daughter to Bhubaneswar. I fear that her life may be in danger,” he told the media.