Law student rejected advances, had panic attack, was blackmailed. What FIR in Kolkata rape case says

Three accused, including former TMCP office-bearer, have been arrested and remanded to police custody till 1 July. Complainant is 24-year-old student of South Calcutta Law College.

Representational image | ANI

New Delhi: Accused Monojit Mishra first made unwelcome advances towards her, saying he was in love with her; he then tried to force himself on her, she fought back; she had a panic attack, and asked to be taken to a hospital but the three accused instead took her in a guard room where Mishra allegedly raped her, while the other two watched. The FIR in the rape case of a 24-year-old law student outlines the timeline of events that transpired Wednesday at South Calcutta Law College. It adds that the complainant also suffered a head injury, and that the accused recorded the act and used it to blackmail her.

According to the FIR lodged at Kasba police station Thursday, a copy of which is with ThePrint, co-accused Zaib Ahmed and Pramit Mukherjee are both students of South Calcutta Law College, while Mishra is a former student now working as a contractual staffer.

Following their arrests, all three accused were produced before the Alipore court which remanded them to police custody till 1 July.

According to the FIR, Mishra is the ‘unofficial head’ of Trinamool Chhatra Parishad (TMCP), students’ wing of the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC), and has been referred to in the FIR as ‘J’, while Zaib Ahmed has been referred to as ‘M’ and Pramit Mukherjee as ‘P’.

The FIR was lodged under sections 127 (wrongful confinement), 70 (1) (when a woman is raped by one or more persons constituting a group or acting in furtherance of a common intention, each of those persons shall be deemed to have committed the offence of rape) and 3 (5) (common intention) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS).

TMCP president Trinankur Bhattacharjee told ThePrint that accused Mishra has not held ‘key organisational positions’ in the last ‘four or five’ years. Mishra, his Facebook page suggests, was organisational secretary of TMCP’s South Kolkata District unit, at least until 2021.

Bhattacharjee in another statement on Facebook condemned the act, and demanded that the culprits be tried and punished without delay.

South Calcutta Law College rape: What FIR says

According to the FIR, the 24-year-old law student had just reached the union room on the South Calcutta Law College campus to fill up a form on 25 June when Mishra entered the room and asked everyone present to sit down. The time was 12:05 pm.

Around 4 pm, students including the complainant started leaving the room. Mishra stopped her, handed her biscuits and asked her and some others to stay back to discuss something. In her statement to the police, the complainant said co-accused Zaib Ahmed, who is a first-year student, then called her outside the room and asked her if she was loyal to Mishra.

Mishra then inquired if Ahmed had explained everything to her, to which she responded, “Yes, dada (brother). I will always be with the unit. Don’t worry.” The complainant said Mishra then told her this wasn’t about politics, and that he was in love with her. According to the FIR, she denied his advances and told him that she was already seeing someone.

It was around 7:30 pm, after the others had left, that Mishra instructed co-accused Ahmed and Mukherjee to go outside the union room. He then allegedly tried to force himself on the complainant. “I denied, and fought back by not letting him do anything and pushing him back. I continuously cried and asked him to let me go…(sic),” the FIR reads, quoting the complainant who said it was at this time that she suffered a panic attack.

Mishra then called Ahmed and Mukherjee back into the union room. They refused to take her to the hospital and instead Ahmed bought her an inhaler. When the complainant felt better and tried to leave, she noticed that the accused had locked the main gate. She told the police that the guard stationed there too was “helpless” and did nothing to help her.

“I asked J (referring to Mishra) to let me go. I even touched his feet but he didn’t let me go,” the FIR says, quoting the complainant.

Mishra then instructed the co-accused to take her to the guard room where he got undressed and allegedly raped her while the co-accused watched. The FIR also says the complainant suffered a head injury and that Mishra also tried to hit her with a hockey stick.

In her statement to the police, the complainant further said that Mishra blackmailed her when she fought back, threatening to have her boyfriend killed and her parents arrested if she were to reveal the incident to anyone. Mishra, she alleged, also showed her videos of the act in an attempt to blackmail her into ‘cooperating with him’ in the future.

(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)