The Telegraph,December 2,2010
Serampore, Dec. 1: A Hooghly businessman who tortured his four-year-old daughter on the suspicion that she wasn’t sired by him allegedly killed her in a fit of rage when the child insisted on sleeping with her parents.
Harishankar Agarwal, 37, used to keep Rohini in a storeroom of his Serampore house while he, wife Anita and their seven-year-old elder daughter slept in the bedroom, a police officer said.
On Monday night, he dragged Rohini by the hand down the stairs to the storeroom and locked her in after she remained adamant on sharing the room where her parents and elder sister slept.
The couple found a bruised and bleeding Rohini unconscious in the storeroom when they opened the door almost three hours later on Monday night. She was declared brought dead at a local hospital.
The grain trader himself got admitted to another hospital complaining of breathing problems yesterday morning before being arrested and charged with culpable homicide not amounting to murder, on the basis of an FIR lodged by Anita.
“In 2006, when Harishankar’s wife was in an advanced stage of pregnancy (with her second child), she left him and went to her parents’ house in Calcutta’s Behala after accusing him of torturing her. There, she gave birth to her younger daughter Rohini. About two-and-half months ago, Harishankar went to his in-laws’ house, apologised and brought his wife and kids back,” said a police officer.
Sub-divisional police officer of Serampore K.P. Barui said their investigations had revealed that Harishankar had developed a hatred for Rohini.
“Harishankar suspected that Rohini was not his daughter and so used to force her to sleep in a storeroom on the ground floor of their two-storeyed house,” Barui said.
Anita has claimed that her husband was a habitual drinker.
“My husband did not like Rohini. He was also in the habit of beating me up after drinking. When we returned to Serampore two-and-a-half-months ago, my husband used to beat up Rohini and force her to sleep alone in the storeroom on the ground floor. After my husband fell asleep, I often went to the storeroom and slept with my daughter,” she said in the FIR.
Rohini suffered injuries while being dragged down to the ground floor. “I tried to stop him but he was in a fit of rage,” Anita said.
SDPO Barui said Agarwal took Rohini to Serampore’s Walsh Hospital around 2.45am, almost three hours after locking her in, but the girl was declared brought dead. “The body has been sent for post-mortem,” Barui said.
Agarwal claimed Rohini had fallen down while rushing down the stairs on Saturday — two days before he is alleged to have killed her — after being scolded for not studying.
But investigations have shown a different sequence of events. “We went to the primary school where Rohini studied and found the girl had attended classes on Monday. Local enquiries also revealed the girl was hale and hearty till Monday. We suspected foul play. Later, after the FIR by the girl’s mother, we arrested Harishankar,” said Tathagata Pandey, the inspector-in-charge of Serampore police station.
-- Shared by Ratul Das
No comments:
Post a Comment