Three held over gangrape of 16-yr-old girl in Tripura

Agartala: Three people were arrested in connection with the alleged gangrape of a 16-year-old girl in Tripura's Unakoti district, the police said.

Claiming that a state minister's son was involved in the incident, the opposition Congress and the CPI(M) demanded the arrest of all the accused, while the BJP dismissed the charge.

The girl was allegedly gang-raped in a three-storey building in Kumarghat on October 19.

Based on an FIR lodged in the case, three people, including a woman, were arrested but a few others are still at large, Kumarghat Sub-divisional Police Officer Biplab Debbarma told PTI on Sunday.

In the police complaint, the survivor's mother alleged that a woman from the neighbourhood had taken the girl to the building in Kumarghat, where she was gang-raped.

The Congress sought stringent police action against those involved in the



crime.

"The name of a minister's son has come up in the case. Therefore, we seek a statement from Chief Minister Manik Saha on the issue. We demand immediate arrest of all the accused," former Congress MLA Asish Saha told reporters.

CPI(M) state secretary Jitendra Choudhury said that "it was disturbing" to know that the name of a minister's son has cropped up in the gangrape case.

"We demand a probe to find out the role of the minister's son. If he is an accused in the case, he must be immediately brought to the book," Choudhury said.

However, the BJP rubbished the allegations as "politically motivated".

"The allegations are totally baseless and politically motivated as he (minister's son) was in Agartala when the incident took place in Kumarghat on October 19. We, too, want all accused to get arrested," BJP's Unakoti district president Pabitra Chandra Debnath said.