10 held for Durgapur rape

All the 10 have been remanded to judicial custody for 14 days.

According to Commissioner of Police (Durgapur-Asansol) Ajoy Nanda the ten were arrested on Monday night while six others are still absconding.

Identification parade will be soon held,said the police.

The arrest,however,took a political colour with Director General of Police Naparajit Mukherjee saying that all the accused worked at a printing press from where CPM mouthpiece,Ganashakti,is published. “All the ten are contract labourers who used to work at Darpan Press in Durgapur from where Ganashakti and three other newspapers are printed,” Mukherjee said at a press conference in Kolkata. He did not explain why he named only the CPM mouthpiece. “The other three newspapers are small and I do not know the names of these papers,” he said.

The Ganashakti authorities,later said,those arrested persons were contractual workers and had nothing to do with the party’s publications. Narayan Dutta,editor of Ganashakti,issued a statement saying: “In the printing press,several newspapers apart from Ganashakti and local dailies,including Ganashakti,Shokalbela,Ekdin and Prabhat Varta are printed.”

He further added that the arrested are neither employees of Ganashakti nor any other newspaper. “We strongly condemn the Trinamool Congress’s motivated campaign of lies against Ganashakti in regard to the development,” said Dutta.

In her complaint,the victim had said a group of 10-15 people gangraped her when she was returning home late on Sunday night with her husband.