PATNA: The arrest of a ward councillor of Muzaffarpur Municipal Corporation, the first arrest in the mysterious abduction and murder case of a 12-year-old Bengali girl in Bihar five years ago, has given her parents hope for justice.
The CBI, which took up the case of Navaruna Chakravarty’s murder after initial reluctance, arrested Rakesh Kumar Sinha Pappu following his interrogation in Patna Monday. He was remanded to 14-day judicial custody by Muzaffarpur special CBI court judge A K Dixit Tuesday.
Navaruna, a student of Class VII at St Xavier’s School in the northern town of Muzaffarpur, was abducted from her house on the intervening night of September 18 and 19 in 2012. Her distraught father Atulya Chakravarty, a pharmaceutical businessman, had alleged it was the handiwork of the local land mafia and politicians to punish him for his refusal to sell his property – a two-storey house built in 1876 and land around it, with a market price of Rs 4 crore.
The CBI took up the case in February 2014 but only after the Supreme Court directed it to do so in November 2013. Previous investigations by the district police and CID had pointed at Navaruna’s possible elopement.
When a human skeleton with the skull missing was recovered in a drain outside her house in November 2012, the police suggested it was an honour killing. Atulya Chakravarty had refused to accept that the skeleton belonged to Navaruna, after the CID informed him following a forensic test. He refused to give DNA samples to the CID for a DNA test and insisted on a CBI probe, requesting chief minister Nitish Kumar for the same in two meetings with him.
Despite Nitish Kumar recommending a CBI probe on September 13, 2013, the agency refused to take up the case. After the Supreme Court directed it on November 25, 2013, to probe the case, the CBI began investigations the next year. Atulya Chakravarty and his wife Moitree Chakravarty were devastated when the CBI told the court in August 2014 that a DNA test had confirmed the skeleton was Navaruna’s.
“The CBI has finally moved and done something three years after taking up this case. I am hopeful of getting justice for my slain daughter,” said Atulya Chakravarty, his eyes welling up. Sources said Rakesh Kumar Sinha Pappu, who was present near Navaruna’s house when the drain was being cleaned, knew about the plot to abduct and kill her and played a role in it. Several criminal cases, including involvement in a train robbery, are pending against Rakesh Kumar Sinha Pappu with the Muzaffarpur police.