KOLKATA: A nursing student was allegedly gang-raped by at least three men after being kidnapped in a shuttle car from Chinar Park bus-stand in Rajarhat on Sunday morning.  She says she was drugged, held hostage in the red light district of Sonagacchi and raped. 

The alleged sexual assault — the 48th in the city in two months — marks a new low for Kolkata and also lays bare the lack of infrastructure in the satellite township dotted by swanky apartment complexes and IT offices.  The 19-year-old trainee nurse agreed to board the illegal shuttle car — as thousands do every day — because she couldn’t find a bus. 

The detective department and police teams from two divisions are looking for the accused but without success. 

The survivor has told police that at 11am on Sunday, she was waiting for a bus to go to Bidhannagar railway station after finishing her shift at a Rajarhat hospital when a Nano pulled up beside her.  The driver offered to give her a lift for a nominal fare.  Public transport is unreliable in Rajarhat and with no buses coming by, she agreed, although there was another person in the rear seat. 

The nurse sat beside the driver.  After five minutes, she felt the man in the back seat touch her shoulder.  She blacked out after that and woke up in a room in a two-storey building in Jogen Duttta Lane, Girish Park, some 25km from Chinar Park bus stop, said joint CP (crime) Pallab Kanti Ghosh.  It was 8 pm and the man in the back seat was in bed with her. 

“We suspect she was somehow drugged,” said a police officer.  Two other strangers sat in a sofa but the Nano driver wasn’t around.  The three took turns to rape her, she said.  All of them were 24-30 years of age. 

Around 11.30pm, she managed to give them the slip by saying she needed to go the toilet.  Once out on the street, she ran screaming towards the main road, so that none of them would risk following her, and hailed a passing taxi. 

The cabby, who asked not to be named, told TOI that he was taking a passenger to Sinthee More (in north Kolkata), when a woman suddenly ran in front of the car, shouting ‘kaku bachao, kaku bachao (uncle, save me)’. “ Her clothes were in disarray and she looked terrified.  She forcibly entered the cab although there was a passenger.  I knew she was in trouble and did as she asked.  I took her to Cossipore police station,” he said. 

The police took her to hospital immediately for medical tests, said an investigator.  Doctors say she is deeply traumatized but out of danger. 

The police are trying to plug the gaps in her statement. “ She does not remember exactly how she lost consciousness.  She was told by her rapists that she had been confined in Sonagacchi.  We are also not clear about what happened between the time she was brought to the Girish Park house and the time she regained consciousness,” said a source at the Lalbazar police HQ. 

Several teams from four police stations — Girish Park, Jorasanko, Chitpore and Cossipore — are trying to nab the accused.  A case of gang rape, drugging and kidnap has been registered at Cossipore police station. 

Cossipore police, in north division, are likely to transfer the case to Girish Park.  Incidentally, Cossipore police station is headed by Md. Kalimuddin, who was the OC of Park Street police station during the infamous gang rape of February 2012.  Though he did accept the complaint this time, the police station kept insisting that it be transferred to Girish Park police in central division.  Senior officers of both divisions, led by deputy commissioners and Lalbazar detectives, had to intervene and take over the investigation. 

The taxi driver’s statement was recorded before a magistrate on Monday.  The survivor might give her statement on Tuesday, said Ghosh.