1. Mob Fury Over Assault On Child
A girls’ school in south Kolkata was attacked on Tuesday by a mob looking for a male teacher accused of sexually assaulting a six-year-old after luring her into a room that is not under CCTV surveillance.
The teacher was arrested on the basis of a complaint by the child’s parents, but not before the government-aided school had been singed by mob fury reminiscent of the agitations last year over similar incidents in two institutes.
The violence started with a group of guardians breaking furniture and damaging a computer in the office of the headmistress. The protest snowballed into a full-blown law and order problem when the protesters tried to set fire to a motorbike parked outside the school, suspecting that it belonged to the accused.
Bricks were hurled at police contingent before a baton charge forced the mob to disperse.
(Source: The Telegraph)
2. Protests Greet Teachers In Bengal High School
A group of teachers arrived at Daribhit High School on Tuesday to facilitate its reopening, but they were turned away by families of two youths who had died after suffering bullet injuries during a clash there last month.
The teachers later said they were feeling insecure and left the spot. The local people asserted that unless a CBI probe into the 20 September violence was initiated, they would not let the school reopen.
The co-educational higher secondary school has over 1,900 students. Its closed for the past 19 days, that is since the day of violence.
Around 10:30 am on Tuesday, five teachers of the school, led by Anil Mondal, reached Daribhit. “We had been to the village as per the directive of the headmaster. Our plan was to discuss with locals and take initiatives to reopen the school,” said Mondal.
(Source: The Telegraph)
3. Pupils Rescue Teacher From Parents
Four girl students ran across railway tracks to rescue a lady teacher of a south Kolkata school who was being assaulted and abused by a group of parents at Dhakuria station on Tuesday morning.
The students took blows themselves but managed to rescue the teacher and helped her return to the school, her clothes almost ripped off by the attackers.
The teacher, in her late 40s, came under attack after parents of students of the school started a protest over an allegation that a six-year-old student had been molested by a teacher.
The girls, all students of Class 12 of the school, had just got off a train on platform Number 2 at the station when they saw their teacher, Roopa Bhattacharya, being thrashed by a group of parents.
Bhattacharya, a teacher in the primary section, was walking down platform number 1 on her way home to Selimpur.
(Source: The Telegraph)
4. Cyclone Titli May Trigger Heavy Rain On Thursday, Friday
Even as cyclone ‘Titli’ approached the Andhra-Odisha coast from west-central Bay of Bengal at a speed of 8 km/hour on Tuesday triggering the possibility of thundershowers in Kolkata and Gangetic Bengal on 11 and 12 October, the Met office had a word of hope for Puja revellers. Showers could cease by 14 October and the weather was set to improve once the cyclone moved away, said the Regional Meteorological Centre (RMC). It could start raining in Kolkata from Wednesday evening, though.
On Tuesday, the deep depression moved west-northwestwards and intensified into a cyclone. It packs a greater punch than the last one — Cyclone Daye — that had fizzed out without much impact, said weathermen. “We expect thundershowers in Kolkata on 11 and 12 October. It could continue to drizzle on 13 October but the weather could improve after that. Once a big system like a tropical cyclone passes away, it sucks out all the moisture from the atmosphere, thereby reducing the chances of further rain. In case it leaves behind residual moisture, showers could continue. We will have a better idea on Thursday,” said RMC director GK Das.
(Source: The Times Of India)
5. Auto Driver Molests 23-yr-old, Attempts to Kidnap Her
A 23-year-old woman was allegedly groped by an autorickshaw driver who tried to drag her into his vehicle near the BD bus stand in Salt Lake on Tuesday morning.
Haradhan Das, 40, the driver had been stalking the second-year design student from Nepal for at least 12 days, an officer of the Bidhannagar commissionerate said.
The woman was returning to her paying guest accommodation in AJ block near the 206 bus terminus after a yoga session on Tuesday when she was molested, police said.
She managed to flee and called up a traffic police officer who had given her his cell phone number when she approached him for help near City Centre on 6 October. Das had harassed her that day too and she had narrated her plight to assistant sub-inspector Samaresh Pandey of Salt Lake police’s traffic department, a friend of the woman friend told Metro.
(Source: The Telegraph)
6. Illegal Parking Rackets Cash In On Shopping Spree To Extort Money
At a time when the Kolkatans are ticking off their last-minute Puja shopping list, extortion rackets are cashing on it and thriving in the broad daylight across the city’s shopping districts in the name of car parking.
The rackets are often run by parking agencies in collusion with police and local goons. They even force vehicle owners to shell out exorbitant amount and in most cases, without any receipt.
TOI visited a number of shopping hubs in the city — from New Market in central Kolkata to Gariahat in south Kolkata — and found that car owners were forced to pay anything between Rs 30 and Rs 100 per hour for parking their cars. For bikes, the rates ranged between Rs 10 and Rs 50 per hour. The hourly parking rates fixed by the Kolkata Municipal Corporation are, however, Rs 10 for cars and Rs 5 for motorcycles.
(Source: The Times Of India)
7. Bengali Film To Mute ‘Nirbhaya’ Reference
The Central Board of Film Certification has rapped makers of Bengali comedy Girlfriend for insensitive use of the word ‘Nirbhaya’, and asked them to mute it after deciding that it violated CBFC guidelines and denigrated women.
Raja Chanda’s film, starring Bonny Sengupta, Koushani Mukherjee, Bharat Kaul and Kanchan Mallick, is a romantic comedy revolving around two people from contrasting backgrounds. One scene shows a group of students performing a play, called ‘Draupadir Vastraharan’, where the ‘Nirbhaya’ case is referred to flippantly.
Screenplay writer NK Salil said he had written the line with a “positive intent”. “The protagonists have suddenly landed on stage and are not aware of the correct lines. Someone remarks that there is no way a scene like Draupadi’s vastraharan can be shown on stage in the current circumstances and, if someone does that, s/he risks being slapped with a ‘Nirbhaya case’,” Salil said.
(Source: The Times Of India)
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