A second complaint of gang rape has been lodged against Shib Prasad Hazra, the Trinamul Congress leader of Sandeshkhali, in North 24-Parganas, who was arrested on Saturday following the first complaint.
Based on the second complaint, the Basirhat police have drawn up another FIR against Hazra and two of his alleged associates. The complainant recorded her statement before a court in Basirhat under Section 164 of the CrPC on Wednesday.
Bengal director-general of police, Rajeev Kumar, visited Sandeshkhali on Wednesday to take stock of the situation there and the ongoing investigations.
Kumar stayed back at Sandeshkhali, an island around 75km from the city, on Wednesday night.
Kumar, who took a launch ride and then boarded an e-rickshaw to reach Sandeshkhali police station, held a series of meetings with senior officers of the district police. With him were the additional director general of police, south Bengal, Supratim Sarkar and superintendent
of police, Basirhat, Hossain Mehedi Rehman, among others.
Sources said Kumar sought details about the law-and-order situation of the places where curbs on assembly under Section 144 of the CrPC had been imposed and the investigation of the cases that had been registered in connection with the violence that erupted in Sandeshkhali in the recent past, sources said.
He also held a detailed meeting with civic volunteers on Wednesday and asked them to remain on their toes, and reviewed intelligence gathering at the grassroots.
After spending the day travelling to various pockets of Sandeshkhali, Kumar told the waiting reporters in the evening that he would brief them on Thursday.
Residents of Sandeshkhali have been vocal against local Trinamul Congress leaders and their associates, accusing them of sexual harassment, grabbing their land and water bodies and denying payment to labourers. The police
have started cases based on specific complaints they have received.
Rehman, superintendent of the Basirhat police, told The Telegraph on Wednesday evening that they had received a complaint of gang rape based on which a case had been registered, referring to the second complaint against Hazra.
The police had registered the first FIR of gang rape last week after a woman mentioned, in a statement recorded before a magistrate, that she had been gang-raped by Hazra and Uttam Sardar, another Trinamul leader from Sandeshkhali who is behind bars.
The second FIR names Hazra, his manager and another man, the police said.
“A search has been launched for the manager and the third accused,” an officer said.
Sandeshkhali has been on the boil since January 5, when an Enforcement Directorate team was beaten back during an attempted raid of the house of Shahjahan Sheikh, a Trinamul strongman in Sandeshkhali. Police said he had been missing since.
In his absence, an avalanche of allegations has hit his associates, including Hazra and Sardar.