A 21-year-old woman was gang-raped in the Watgunge police station area here late on Sunday evening, the police said. The incident again brings to the fore concerns about the safety of women, both in the city and elsewhere in the State.
“A complaint of gang-rape has been recorded, based on the statement by the family of the woman. After work, she was returning home in a taxi when a group forcibly took her to a desolate spot and allegedly raped her,” V. Solomon Nesakumar, Deputy Commissioner of the Kolkata Police (Port Division), told journalists here on Monday.
According to the complaint, the woman, an employee of a retail outlet in a shopping mall in the southern part of the city, left the workplace and reached Kidderpore with some associates. She was by herself while boarding a shuttle taxi from there to her house at Howrah. Her mother has said she reached Kidderpore around 10.30 p.m. and waited for a bus. When she failed to get one, she boarded a shuttle taxi. The driver took the taxi to a desolate spot, where she was forced out of the vehicle by him and four others who were inside, and allegedly raped her in an empty lorry parked there. The woman, in a semi-conscious state through the night, contacted her relatives early on Monday. She was admitted to the Howrah State General Hospital by her family. She underwent surgery and was shifted to a private facility.
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District Chief Medical Officer Health Debashis Roy said a medical examination revealed signs of her having been raped. But, he said, details were awaited. The police are trying to locate the taxi with the help of closed CCTV cameras installed at traffic intersections where the incident occurred. One person has been arrested so far.