KOLKATA: The Alipore ACJM court on Tuesday demanded to know the state’s measures over the past two years to ensure punishment for law college rape prime accused Monojit Mishra ever since the first complaints were lodged against him in 2023. “What have you been doing since 2023?” said the ACJM magistrate. The question came seconds after the special public prosecutor, Bivas Chatterjee, mentioned this “bigger crime could have been avoided had he been punished for his earlier crimes since 2023”. Police showed Mishra as ‘arrested’ in the said earlier cases, one of rioting and the other of molestation, registered in 2023 and 2024. Charge sheets had been filed in both cases and Mishra had been granted bail. All the four accused in the campus rape case—Mishra (31), his two associates, students Pramit Mukherjee (20) and Zaib Ahmed (19), and campus security guard Pinaki Banerjee—were produced in court on Tuesday and remanded in judicial custody till Aug 5. “The gait pattern analysis, which will confirm the presence of the accused on the spot, will be carried out on Wednesday. The charge sheet will be filed at the earliest and the state will go in for custody trial,” said public prosecutor Sourin Ghosal.
Pointing out that they were not applying for bail, Mishra’s lawyer, Raju Ganguly, claimed his client was being denied proper food and water in custody and was also being pressured to “confess to the crime”. Ganguly also pleaded that a mosquito net, a few books and paper be arranged for Mishra as his “fundamental rights”. But special PP Chatterjee claimed Mishra’s plea for stationery might be a ruse to pose as a meritorious student, who was missing his law classes. “It’s important to look at his criminal records,” Chatterjee said, adding he had a record of 12 cases against him. Chatterjee said the accused were not cooperating with the investigation, as was evident from the police interrogation on July 19. “We oppose the bail applications by Pramit and Pinaki. The guard’s job was to stop the crime from taking place. Instead, he guarded the crime spot, which amounted to furthering the crime. Those recording the crime are very much part of the crime. Thus all four are in the same boat,” said Chatterjee.Outside the court, Ganguly dismissed the 12 old cases, including the ones where Mishra was shown arrested on Tuesday, and called them ‘politically motivated’. “Each case has a counter case. They were drawn up by his political rivals. That is why it led the magistrate to question what the state was doing on these cases since 2023,” he claimed.
