Kolkata: Members of West Bengal Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) Mahila Morcha, here on Monday, took out a protest rally over the death of a 16-year-old girl, who was allegedly raped and murdered in North Dinajpur’s Chopra on Sunday.
The police, however, said according to the post-mortem report the girl died of poisoning. She had appeared in the Class X state board examination this year.
“We demand justice. How can the police so easily say the girl died of poisoning? The case must be thoroughly investigated,” said state Mahila Morcha chief Agnimitra Paul.
The girl, she said was lured by miscreants, who raped and poisoned her. “A bottle of poison was also recovered from the place of incident,” she said.
Irate locals had torched vehicles, vandalised police vans and attacked cops while protesting against the death on Sunday evening. As many as 30 people, including some cops, were injured.
Later, state BJP leaders took up the issue alleging the girl belonged to a family of BJP supporters and thus became a target for the Trinamool Congress-backed goons in the village.
The girl’s body was recovered from around 700 metres away from her native village under Chaturagaj-Sonapur panchayat of the Darjeeling Lok Sabha constituency.
She was taken to Chopra hospital and later to Islampur sub-divisional hospital, which declared her brought dead.
West Bengal Tourism Minister Gautam Deb said the BJP was resorting to dirty political tricks over the death to squeeze some electoral mileage in the region.
