Bengal Woman, Allegedly Raped By Relative, In Hospital; Accused Arrested

The woman who was raped allegedly by a relative and was tortured with an iron rod inserted in her private parts has been operated upon in a government hospital and is in a serious condition, hospital sources said Monday.

Doctors operated on her at the Sadar hospital in Jalpaiguri on Sunday night and the woman is in the intensive care unit, the sources said.

She is being administered blood as she had been bleeding profusely. "She is a serious condition but is stable," doctors treating her said.

Meanwhile, the accused relative and another person who allegedly helped him in the crime were produced before a local court on Monday and Judge H Bhattacharya granted the police request and remanded them to police custody for two days.

The two had been detained by the police on Sunday and arrested in the evening after interrogating them.

The tribal woman's husband, a labourer, was away from home during the incident which took place on Saturday near their home at Niranjan Pat locality under Dhupguri police station area of Jalpaiguri district.

Police said that the alleged relative had confessed to his crime during interrogation and had said that he had committed it out of personal anger. The man is locked in a land dispute with the woman's family, the police said.

He had called the 35-year-old woman, a mother of three, out of her home on the pretext of resolving the land dispute, raped her and tortured her by inserting an iron road in her private parts, the Jalpaiguri superintendent Amitabha Maiti told reporters today quoting her.

Two other persons accompanied the accused but they did not rape or torture her, the police officer said adding he had spoken to the woman after her operation.

Maiti said that police is on the look out for the third person, who is absconding.

A rickshaw-puller had found her and taken her home that night, the police said.

The incident brought back memories of the ghastly Nirbhaya rape case of 2012 in which a woman was gangraped inside a moving bus in New Delhi and one of the accused inserted a rod in her private parts.