KOLKATA: Police filed the first charge sheet in the law college gang-rape case against four persons on Saturday, 58 days after the police arrested the main accused.
In her complaint, the survivor alleged that the crime was committed on the campus between 7.30 pm and 10.50 pm on June 25.
The charge sheet includes the names of the main accused, Manojit Mishra (31), and his two close associates, law students Pramit Mukhopadhyay (20) and Zaib Ahmed (19). The arrested security guard, Pinaki Banerjee (51), has also been included in the charge sheet.
All four accused were charged under the BNS for gang rape, wrongful confinement, causing grievous injury, issuing death threats, committing crimes with a common intention, and under the Information Technology Act, according to court sources.
The charge sheet was submitted on Saturday in the Alipore Chief Judicial Magistrate's court, along with multiple documents, including a pen drive.
Lalbazar stated that the charge sheet is 658-page long, with the main content spanning 170 pages, and includes testimonies from 80 individuals.
Additionally, it includes multiple reports from DNA tests, medical examinations, and forensic tests of the accused. Sources claim that Mishra's DNA matched the samples taken from the complainant's body, as noted in the charge sheet.
The main accused, Mishra, was charged under BNS 70 (1) (gang rape), which can attract rigorous imprisonment for not less than 20 years but may extend to imprisonment for life.
He was also charged under BNS 127(2) (punishment for simple wrongful confinement), section 77 (the offence of voyeurism by punishing the act of watching or capturing images of a woman in a private act without her consent.
The other charges slapped on Mishra include BNS section 351(3) (the offence of criminal intimidation when a person threatens to cause death, grievous hurt, or the destruction of property by fire), section 140(3) that deals with kidnapping or abduction with the intent of secret and wrongful confinement, section 140(4) that addresses kidnapping or abduction with the intent to cause grievous hurt, slavery, or unnatural lust, section 142 that pertains to the wrongful concealment or confinement of a kidnapped or abducted person, section 238 that refers to the offence of causing the disappearance of evidence or giving false information to shield an offender, and sections 67A and 66E of the Information Technology Act.
In the initial FIR registered at the Kasba police station, the police originally pressed charges under sections 127 (2) (wrongful confinement), 70 (1) (gang rape), and 3 (5) (common intention) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita against the accused.
Even as the investigating officer filed the charge sheet, public prosecutor Sourin Ghosal stated that there was sufficient evidence in the case that corroborates the statement of the survivor. "This is a fit case of custody trial where we are confident of securing conviction," said Ghosal.
On June 25, it was alleged that the student was confined and raped in a security guard's room on campus. During the investigation of the complaint, police arrested Mishra, a temporary employee of the college. Mukhopadhyay and Ahmed, students of the law college, were arrested on June 26. Due to inconsistencies in his statement, Banerjee, who was responsible for security at the college on the night of the incident, was arrested later.