Baruipur rape and murder case: Accused killed in encounter while attempting to escape

Prabhas Mondal, one of the three accused in the alleged gangrape and murder of a 12-year-old girl at Baruipur in South 24 Parganas district of West Bengal, was killed in an encounter on early Wednesday morning.

The incident took place when Mondal was allegedly trying to escape after snatching a service rifle of an escorting police official. He was taken to the crime scene to reconstruct the incident.

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There, Mondal is believed to have snatched a service rifle from one of the police personnel escorting him and tried to escape.

While the police personnel chased him, Mondal fired at them from the police rifle that he snatched, IANS reported. The police officials resorted to counter-firing, in which Mondal was also shot.

With bullet injuries on his body, the accused was then taken to a nearby hospital, where the doctors declared him dead.

The body of the 12-year-old minor girl was recovered from a pond in the Suryapur area in Baruipur on Sunday. It has been alleged that she was raped and murdered. Tension erupted in the area following violent protests after the recovery of the body.

Later on, a six-member Special Investigation Team (SIT) began an investigation into the matter, with Mondal being the first to be arrested.

After interrogating him, police arrested the other two accused in the case, namely Dibakar Sarkar and Ananda Sardar, with the latter being the prime accused and the mastermind in the alleged crime against the minor girl.

Locals told police that the minor girl was seen with the accused before she went missing on Saturday afternoon. During the investigation, officials found CCTV footage from the area where Mondal could be seen with the minor.