In the past 11 years of TMC (mis)rule, West Bengal has witnessed a huge spike in rapes and crimes against women. The situation keeps worsening with more such cases coming to the fore. This time, a deaf and mute girl was pulled into a cab, raped and robbed in a central area of Kolkata. 

The incident took place at around 8 PM, on January 25 when the victim, who works at a bag-manufacturing factory in the Anandapur police station area, was waiting for her commute near Ruby Bypass interjection. Soon a cab pulled up near her, and the cab driver started to have a conversation with the victim. Realizing she was mute and unable to communicate, he dragged her into the cab on the seat next to his and drove away at a high speed.

The driver drove to a secluded area, raped the hapless girl inside the car, robbed her of 5000 cash and dropped her at an area near the bypass area. The victim walked to the Park Circus station and took a train to Mograhat. She then shared her ordeal with her father after reaching home. 

The father of the victim accompanied his daughter to the hospital for a medical examination. On January 27, they lodged a complaint at the Pragati Maidan police station. With the help of an interpreter, the statement of the victim was recorded.

Looking at CCTV footage from the Ruby Bypass area, police determined the license number of the taxi used in this crime. They identified the accused cab driver as Kamre Alam aka ‘Raja’, a resident of the Panchannagram area, and arrested him. He was presented in court and has been sent to police custody. During police interrogations, Alam tried to mislead the police by stating the victim and he ‘knew each other previously’. 

This is not the first time a mute and deaf woman has been sexually assaulted in Mamata Banerjee’s state. One of the earliest rape cases in her reign reported in February 2012, soon after she came to power, involved the rape of a 19-year-old deaf and mute girl who was found unconscious and nude in a government hospital in Bankura district. She had been raped by a junior doctor.

In 2013, a 16-year-old deaf and mute girl, who was attending a marriage with her mother was gang-raped in the Baduria police station area of North 24 Parganas district. The police arrested the four accused – Ujjal Mondal, Asif Hossain, Iilias Mortaza and Azharuddin, who had been harassing the girl a few days back and were warned to stay away by her family, but undeterred they raped the helpless minor and left her to die at an auto-rickshaw stand.

In 2016, another deaf and mute woman was gang-raped by three men who had lured her into their car near the Garden Reach area in West Kolkata. This area is colloquially called ‘mini-Pakistan’. In a more recent incident from November 2021, a similar case surfaced from Sealdah when a woman with speech and hearing impairment was reportedly gang-raped by 4 men over four months.