In a first, Kolkata court grants police custody to law college rape accused 39 days after arrest

Kolkata: In what is being claimed as a first-of-its-kind order by a court in Kolkata, all four accused in the South Calcutta Law College rape case were remanded to police custody for an additional period of three days, 39 days after they were first arrested.

The prime accused in the case, Monojit Mishra, an alumnus and a contractual employee of the college, and two of his suspected accomplices, Pramit Mukhopadhyay and Zaib Ahmed, both students, along with Pinaki Banerjee, security guard of the campus, were granted police custody till August 8 by Amit Sarkar, Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate of Alipore Court.

The order was passed on Tuesday in the wake of all four accused having previously been remanded to police custody for 11 days, followed by their judicial custody for another 28 days.

“Under the provisions of Section 167 of the earlier CrPC Act, the prayer for police remand had to be made within the first 15 days of arrest. That provision has now changed under the new Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS), which replaced the CrPC on July 1, 2024. The BNSS now empowers the police to pray for remand anytime within the first 60 days of arrest for heinous crimes like rape and murder,” Sourin Ghosal, the Kolkata Police Chief Public Prosecutor in Alipore Court, explained.

“But this was the first time that the relevant clauses of BNSS were invoked in a court in Kolkata and, possibly, in the entire West Bengal and in which the judge found merit,” Ghoshal added.

He said that the prayer for additional police remand of the accused was made in the light of fresh reports received by the investigators from cyber and forensic experts.

“The statements previously made by the accused and the reports we have now received do not match in many places. Hence, there is a need to freshly interrogate the accused in police custody and, if required, they may be made to sit face to face to get to the bottom of the alleged crime,” Ghoshal said.

In its order, the ACJM court, Alipore, rejected the defence counsel’s prayer for bail and held that Section 47 of the BNSS, which mandates the police to inform the arrested person of the grounds of arrest and right to bail, has been “duly complied” with.

“It transpires from the prayer of the prosecution that PC is required for the purpose of pending investigations and so more fully described in the forwarding report of the IO. On perusal of the CD (case diary), I do find incriminating materials available against all the accused persons,” the judge stated in his order.

“All these aspects seem to this Court to be much of the essence and importance so far as investigation of this case is concerned, but the case itself is very grave and heinous to say the least. The purpose of the investigation of this case can be well served if the police custody of the present accused persons is granted by this court as prayed for,” the order goes on to add.

The shocking on-campus rape was alleged by a first-year student at the law college in south Kolkata’s Kasba area where she named Mishra as the principal perpetrator of the crime and both Mukhopadhyay and Ahmed as accomplices.

While the crime allegedly took place between 7.30 pm and 10.50 pm on June 25, the three accused were arrested on the intervening night of June 26 and 27. They were subsequently produced in Alipore court and remanded in police custody on June 27.

A day later, the on-duty security guard of the campus during the time of the alleged crime, was also booked and remanded in custody.

All accused have since been produced before the court thrice for extension of police remand and their subsequent judicial custody. The Kolkata Police prayed for the maximum term of custody for all the accused after they had served two back-to-back judicial remands of 28 days.