NGO worker murder: Two minors held

The police arrested two girls from Siliguri, who fled from Kolkata’s red light area – Sonagachi after allegedly killed a woman there. The assailants reportedly had murdered a senior functionary of an NGO that works for the welfare of sex-workers of Kolkata.

The police source said, those two girls have acknowledged their crime, confessing that they had killed Kabita Roy, a former president of the NGO in who was working as a residential caretaker of the NGO’s office at Sonagachi red light area.

The police are still interrogating the girls to ascertain the motives clearly. They will soon be brought to the city.

It should be recalled that two minor girls whom the NGO had rescued from Bowbazar and had kept them in the custody of the murdered functionary, had gone missing. The blood smeared body of the Roy was found there in the room.

She was found dead in her room located on the second floor of the NGO’s office building at 12/5 Nilmoni Mitra Street at Sonagachi. There was a gamcha tied around her neck and her head was smashed with a stone.

Other office bearers of the NGO discovered her dead body when they reported for duty on that day following the Bhai Phonta holiday. They subsequently discovered that Rs 750 had also been robbed from the cash box of an AIDS helpline centre that the NGO runs on the ground floor of its office building.

The NGO functionaries came to know about the murder at 11 am. Police officials who examined the body later told that the assailants had hit the victim with a heavy object. Later, they strangulated Roy to ensure her death.

Those two girls hailing from Bongaon in North 24 Parganas were rescued by the NGO’s activists on October 31 when they turned up at a brothel at Bowbazar saying that they wanted to join the sex trade.

They being minors, the NGO activists kept them in the custody of Kabita Roy at it short-stay home for such girls. “The plan was to send them to government approved child welfare home through the Burtolla police station. But even before this, the two have now gone missing and Kabita-di has been brutally murdered,” a worker said.

Burtola police had sent Kabita’s body for post-mortem and had pressed a sniffer dog to trace the route through which the assailants operated.