Four get life term for rape,loot and murder

Delivering the judgment,Judge Badhishwar Mohanty awarded life imprisonment to Kurban Ali,Chinu

Sardar,Pute Sardar and Lodhai Sardar for killing the driver and looting the buses. While the court convicted Lodhai Sardar for raping the women,Pute

Sardar was convicted for molesting them.

Since the group had not only robbed the three buses carrying the relatives but had also raped the women and molested them,they deserved a serious punishment,the court observed.

On Monday,the court had convicted four accused but had acquitted 17 others,including two local CPM leaders — Subal Bagchi and Saidul Islam — for lack of evidence. Bagchi was then a member of CPM zonal committee from Ranaghat and Islam was the pradhan of Kamalpur gram panchayat. A large number of witnesses had turned hostile in the case affecting the prosecution. Ninety per cent of the witnesses out of the 158 turned hostile,said Dilip Chatterjee,the counsel of the state government.

On February 5,2003,a gang of robbers looted the three luxury buses carrying a group,which was on its way to attend a marriage on the Dhantola-Ainsmali Road in Nadia,about 70

km from Kolkata. Samir Ghosh,the bus driver,was shot dead when he recognised that some of the robbers were locals. Six women were dragged to a nearby school building and raped. Many more were allegedly molested in the incident.