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Kolkata: Women guard Basti No. 17 as men flee home to avoid arrest

KOLKATA: Scores of households at the Chetla slum don’t have any male members now with most of the youths and teenagers fleeing the area on Tuesday fearing arrest in connection with the assault on cops at Tollygunge police station in the wee hours of Monday. A group of women remained posted at the slum entrance to maintain vigil for a better part of the day as cops raided the slum multiple times since the wee hours of Tuesday and arrested 4 persons.

A mob of around 60 from the Chetla slum descended on Tollygunge police station on Monday and thrashed cops for two and a half hours to protest against the detention of three persons for drunken rowdyism near Menoka cinema off Southern Avenue earlier on Sunday evening.


According to residents of the Matalibagan slum, located near No. 17 bus stand in the interiors of Chetla, cops had entered the slum around 2am on Tuesday and picked up Deepak Adhikari and Chhotka Dolui — both rickshaw pullers. The officers returned in the morning armed with CCTV grabs, which showed faces of two youths from the slum — Akash and Gullu — but were refused entry by a group of women led by Putul Naskar. The cops had to back off.



Around 2.30pm, a team of officers with a dozen women police personnel from Lalbazar reached the slum again and arrested Naskar and Pratima Das when they tried to resist them from entering the slum. Both of them were actively involved in the assault on Monday and were caught on CCTV footage and television cameras thrashing an officer. “Police came to my house and questioned me about my husband and brother. My husband and son had gone there to see what was happening and was hit by the cops. My brother has left home in fear,” said Manasi Sinha , a resident of the slum.

Jharna Halder, mother of Ranajoy — who was among the three youths detained for the drunken rowdyism on Sunday evening and later freed by the slum dwellers — said her son and his friends had fled the area. “My son is innocent. But the way cops are portraying him like a dreaded criminal has made me wonder what will happen to him if he’s arrested. I don’t know where he has gone,” said Halder.

Neighbours and relatives said Ranajoy was arrested only two weeks ago in a Naka patrol where he was caught speeding without a helmet in a drunken state. He was later released following payment of fine. “It’s true that he drinks a lot but he is not a criminal. When we learnt an innocent youth like Ranajoy was arrested on Sunday, all of us went there in his support,” said Pinki Mondal, his sister.

The residents, however, identified Naskar, a woman in his 50s, as a local tough and the brain behind the police station rampage. Cops and locals said Naskar used to run an illegal hooch den earlier in the area and is also involved in a number of illegal constructions around Tolly Nallah. Locals said she also enjoyed blessings of local Trinamool leaders. “She is the leader of the slum. She was the one who had asked all of us to head towards the police station, around 2 km from the slum,” said a resident.

An hour before the arrest, when TOI had caught up with Naskar, who was leading the vigil outside the slum, she had identified herself as an ayah but admitted to have been involved in the case. “Ranajoy is my distant relative. He had called me from the police station claiming he was being beaten up by cops and falsely charged in a case. So, we had gone there, made the cops understand and they even released him. But some cops then started beating us. We retaliated,” she said.

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