Human rights leader denounces police inaction

Kirity Roy, secretary of the Banglar Manabadhikar Suraksha Mancha (MASUM), a Hooghly-based human rights group, has asked the Additional Director General of Police (ADGP), CID, West Bengal, to ensure speedy investigation into the trafficking of a 17 year old man. old girl, alleging police inaction despite a complaint filed more than a month and a half ago.

The girl belongs to a poor caste family of Hariharpur village, Basirhat police station of 24 Parganas district (north), Roy said, naming a resident of Pathankhali village, Gosaba police station, 24 district of Parganas (south), for kidnapping the girl. when she left home to buy items on March 26.

“Hariharpur village is located on the bank of the Ichamati River and adjoins the India-Bangladesh border. The villagers mainly depended on fishing in the Ichamati River, but now fishing is restricted by the personnel of the Ichamati River. border security stationed and forced the villagers to maintain their families by working as wage laborers in brick kilns,” Roy said in his representation.

The accused works loading bricks into trucks and takes care of transporting the bricks, he claimed, noting: “The area is infamous for its missing girls; where girls are trapped by young people from outside. Marriage of underage girls is phenomenal in this area.”

Based on the complaint of the father of the trafficked girl, the Basirhat police station opened criminal proceedings. The Basirhat police and its Sonarpur PS counterpart carried out a few raids on April 4 in a few places in Sonarpur but failed to locate the girl, said le Roy, regretting however: “Our investigation team has learned that the Basirhat police had not given the copy of the FIR to the complainant.”

“Anxious family members alleged that the police were treating the case casually and hence failed to locate the girl even though a month and a half had already passed. When contacted, the investigator assigned to the case said that “we are trying but we have many cases to handle, not just this one,” Roy said.