A man accused of raping and murdering his 12-year-old niece in West Bengal’s Uttar Dinajpur district was killed in an exchange of fire with police early on Monday, officials said.
The Raiganj firing incident is the fourth reported police encounter in West Bengal since the BJP came to power. “We had been searching for the accused for the past four days. Police had claimed that he snatched a firearm from personnel while being taken to the crime scene for reconstruction and opened fire, forcing them to retaliate in self-defence.
Acting on a tip-off received around 2 am on Monday, our team traced him in Parapukur near the Bengal-Bihar border. In July, Prabhas Mondal, an accused in the rape and murder of an 11-year-old girl in South 24 Parganas district’s Baruipur, was killed in an encounter.
The accused, Dilip Roy, allegedly opened fire at a police team conducting a raid to arrest him at a village in Raiganj, they said. He opened fire at the police team, who retaliated in self-defence,” the senior police officer said. Reacting to the latest incident, state minister Dilip Ghosh said those who violated the law would have to face the police.
Her body was recovered two days later from a forest near the Kulik river. Her kin alleged that she had been raped and murdered. The 12-year-old girl had gone missing on November 3 after leaving her home on a bicycle in the afternoon, according to her family.
