Justice Arindam Sinha of Calcutta High Court today said there is no need for the high court’s intervention in the trial of Park Street gang rape case. The court stated this after one of the accused, after Ali Khan alias Azhar Ali, had moved court seeking high court’s intervention to expedite the trial of the case. Though his client was arrested in 2016, end of the trial is not in sight till date, the Khan’s counsel submitted.
The lengthy process of trial has made the petitioner spend his days behind the bars, it further submitted. On 20 March, the high court had asked the trial court to complete the proceedings of the trial in three months. Khan moved court as the trial continues well after the specified time span. The trial court judge is scheduled to retire on 22 December, the petitioner’s counsel submitted.
This will further delay the trial, it was submitted. On 6 February 2012, five men who had offered to drop a woman at her home from a night club at Kolkata’s Park Street area gang-raped her. In 2013, she had revealed her identity to the world and marched on the streets of Kolkata to protest against rapes and murders in the state. She had died of meningitis last year.
After a search of over four years, two absconding accused, including the prime suspect, in the Park Street gangrape case were arrested from Greater Noida. Kader Khan and his cousin Ali Khan were arrested by Kolkata Police and brought to the city. They were arrested by a four-member team of Kolkata Police in a joint operation with the local police from their hideout at Sector Alpha in Kasna area of Greater Noida.
After the rape victim filed a complaint with police in 2012, chief minister Mamata Banerjee had termed the incident as shajano ghotana (fabricated case), triggering a controversy. Damayanti Sen, the then Kolkata Police joint commissioner (Crime), had pursued the case and identified the five accused, but she was later shunted out of her post.