Prime accused in Park street rape case arrested (Third Lead)

Four years after the crime, the prime accused in the Park Street rape case was arrested by a special team of Kolkata Police from Uttar Pradesh's Ghaziabad on Friday, following months of surveillance.

Kader Khan was nabbed along with an accomplice, Ali Khan, from Greater Noida, the police said, and added that both were brought to Kolkata on transit remand. They were produced before a local court which sent them to 14 days police custody.

"Yesterday (Thursday) we got an input that they were hiding in the area. A special team raided house No. F/58 in Sector Alpha two of Greater Noida. We picked up both of them from there," Deputy Commissioner (South) Muralidhar Sharma of Kolkata Police told reporters here.

Police had kept them under surveillance for the last six months, with Kolkata police working closely with their Uttar Pradesh counterparts in Greater Noida.

"We caught them with the help of the local police in Kasna. We had certain intelligence about their movement and had kept them under surveillance for the last six months. Working on a tip-off, we were able to arrest them around 1 a.m. on Friday," Sharma said.

The two accused were produced to Bankshal court in Kolkata on Friday, where they were sent to police custody till Octobe 14.

"The case needs to be re-opened. Police was not able to interrogate the two accused yet as they were on the run. Therefore we have appealed for police custody for them so that their involvement in the rape incident can be investigated," said the public prosecutor.

However, the counsel of the accused said they are not happy with the court's order and said a case cannot be reopened after the final verdict is given.

"It is discrediting to police that they took four and a half years to arrest the two accused. However, there is no point reopening a case after the verdict was already given by the High Court. They should be given jail custody as per the previous verdict." the counsel said.

An Anglo-Indian woman was sexually assaulted at gunpoint in a moving car on February 6, 2012, by a gang of five men.

Her misery was coupled by disparaging remarks made by several ruling Trinamool Congress leaders including Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee who called the rape incident a "cooked up case" and Lok Sabha member Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar who tagged it as a "sex deal gone wrong".

However, the gutsy Anglo-Indian woman, who came forward and revealed her identity on television in June 2013, fought her case for three years against heavy odds before she died in March last year of multiple organ failure after being diagnosed with encephalitis.

Nearly nine months after her death, the Anglo-Indian woman finally got justice with a court pronouncing guilty all three accused who were on trial in the sensational case. The main accused Kader Khan and Ali went missing eluding police until now.

--IANS

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Sirshendu PanthBureau Chief, IANS, Kolkata.

Indo-Asian News Service