“She left home around 4.30 pm on Saturday to attend a friend's birthday, but she never made it back,” said the uncle of the 11-year-old girl allegedly raped and murdered in West Bengal's Baruipur area, hoping the words might eventually make sense. So far, three persons have been arrested in connection with the case. Two of the accused were produced before the Baruipur court on Monday, and the police sought 14 days custody, a third accused was arrested later in the day. The police added gang rape charges to the case after developments in the investigation and preliminary findings.
The lane leading to their house in Baruipur Surjapur area is thick with mud after intermittent rain. Police personnel stand guard as neighbours gather in groups, furious over the crime that has shaken the locality. Slogans demanding justice erupt every few minutes. Political delegations continue to arrive, while residents remain wary of outsiders, accusing sections of the media of misrepresenting their suffering.
The house itself tells a different story. Inside the family's modest home grief hangs over every room. The youngest of three daughters is gone. Origami flowers still adorn the walls. Paper stars, painstakingly taped to a corner by the 11-year-old, remain untouched. Her school identity card hangs from a nail. Her elder sister leans silently against the wall, unable to speak. Their mother has been taken to a relative's house after Sunday's funeral, unable to bear the constant stream of visitors. Their father sits quietly in the living room, surrounded by relatives. “I only pray we get justice,” he managed to whisper.
According to the family, the child left home carrying a birthday gift for a friend who lived barely 700 metres away. “When we realised she had neither reached her friend's house nor returned home, we rushed to the police station and filed a missing diary,” her uncle said. “We kept pleading with the police to act quickly, but there was no urgency. Every passing hour felt precious to us, yet it seemed like nobody was taking our fears seriously.”
Convinced they could not afford to wait; family members and neighbours began searching on their own. “We couldn't sit at home. If the police weren't going to look for her, we had to do it ourselves.” The family says they collected CCTV footage from shops and houses along nearby roads, piecing together the girl's final movements. “That was when we saw Prabhash Mondal taking her away. The moment we saw that footage, we knew something was terribly wrong,” he recounted.
The uncle alleges that the family later confronted the accused themselves. “We kept following every lead until we found him. At first he denied everything, but eventually he broke. He told us where the crime had taken place and led us to where they had dumped her body.”
According to the family, the accused also named three others before leading them, accompanied by a police constable, to a secluded swamp beside the railway tracks behind the family's home. “The body had been stuffed inside a plastic sack beneath thick foliage in the water,” the uncle alleged. “Nobody would have found her there.” The family alleges that they were then asked to recover the body themselves. “That is the police's responsibility. What if important forensic evidence had been lost? Nobody seemed to care,” he said, adding that it was the family that entered the swamp.
“When we pulled her out, she barely had any clothes on. There were injuries all over her body. She had been brutally mutilated. No family should ever have to witness something like that.” He further alleged that the body was not immediately sent for post-mortem examination. “We had to bring her body to the marketplace and place it on a bench. She lay there for nearly two hours before the police finally arrived.” The family's anger deepened, he said, when the body was eventually taken away. “They dragged her body by the head. Even in death, every human being deserves dignity. She was only 11 years old. Watching that is what enraged everyone standing there.”
The uncle pauses before speaking again. “She was the youngest of our three daughters. She left home carrying a birthday gift... and we brought her back like this. How does any family come to terms with that?”
The family's allegations extend to the investigation itself. “After Prabhash named another accused, locals caught him and handed him over to the police. But he was released, and now he is absconding. Tell me, is this how law and order is supposed to function? We felt that from searching for our child to recovering her body, we were the ones doing the police's job.” He added that the investigation gathered pace only after senior officers intervened.
On Sunday, a man, reported to be one of the accused, was lynched to death in the chaos that ensued after the body was brought to the local market. The family also condemned the subsequent lynching of a man by an enraged mob after he was reportedly named by the principal accused. “That should never have happened either,” the uncle said. “Nothing can justify another death.” The uncle added that the Bengal Chief Minister has been in touch with the family, and assured that justice will be served.
The investigation is being conducted by a Special Investigation Team (SIT) constituted by the West Bengal Police. Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari called for capital punishment for the perpetrators involved in the rape and murder of a 12-year-old girl in Baruipur. Following the preliminary post-mortem report, Adhikari promised the death penalty to ensure strict justice and vowed that "no one will be spared".
The alleged rape and murder of the minor has sparked widespread outrage across Baruipur, leading to violent protests, a heavy police deployment, and heightened security in the area as the investigation continues.
