Kolkata Police Forms Nine-Member SIT To Probe IIM-Calcutta Rape Case

(MENAFN- IANS) Kolkata, July 13 (IANS) Police have formed a nine-member Special Investigation Team (SIT) to probe the alleged rape of an outsider woman by a second-year student of the Indian Institute of Management-Calcutta (IIM-C) inside the campus hostel at Joka in Kolkata.

State police sources said that the first task of the SIT will be to get clarity on the confusion arising from the contradictory statements by the victim and her father.

On one hand, the victim, in her statement, claimed that the accused called her to the boys' hostel within the campus on Friday evening for counselling, and offered her pizza and cold drinks laced with sedatives. The victim claimed that after consuming the pizza, she fell unconscious.

Thereafter, as per her statement to the police, accused Parmanand Mahaveer Toppannavar a.k.a. Parmanand Jain (26) raped her in the hostel while she was unconscious.

On the contrary, the victim's father had told media persons that nothing of that sort happened with her daughter, and she became unconscious as she tumbled while alighting from a vehicle.

The victim's father stuck to his statement even after a trial court in Kolkata, on Saturday afternoon, remanded the accused to police custody till July 19.

The SIT will also probe the alleged breach in security protocol in IIM-C, where the victim entered the boys' hostel without getting her name registered in the visitors' book.

The cops of Haridevpur Police Station, under whose jurisdiction the Joka campus comes, had already sent a letter to the IIM-C authorities seeking clarification on the existing standard operating procedure in maintaining security protocols and whether there was any breach in the security protocol on the evening when the incident occurred.

On Saturday, the IIM-C authorities said that since the matter was under investigation, they would refrain from commenting.

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