PATNA: In a major breakthrough in the mysterious abduction and murder case of Bengali girl Navaruna Chakravarty in Bihar in 2012, CBI on Sunday arrested six people, raising her distraught parents’ hopes about a final revelation of the culprits’ identity and the cause behind the crime.
The six arrested, who were called from Muzaffarpur and interrogated by CBI sleuths in Patna before being arrested, were presented before Muzaffarpur special CBI court judge AK Dixit, who remanded them to judicial custody for 14 days.
The arrests, which came seven months after CBI made the first arrest in the much-hyped case, caused a sensation in Muzaffarpur town. Among those arrested are former Zilla Parishad vice-chairman Shah Alam Abbu, Shiva Ram Hotel owner Abhay Gupta, well-known builder Brajesh Singh and marble businessman Vinit Agrawal. The two other arrested men are private hospital owner Vikku Shukla alias Vikrant Shukla and Navaruna’s neighbour Rakesh Kumar.
Twelve-year-old 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 father Atulya Chakravarty, a pharmaceuticals businessmen, had alleged it was the handiwork of the local land mafia and politicians to punish him for his refusal to sell off his property – a two-storey house built in 1876 and land around it, with a market price of Rs 4 crore.
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 cops had suggested an honour killing.
Despite Bihar CM Nitish Kumar recommending a CBI probe in September 2013, the central agency had refused to take up the case. After the Supreme Court directed it on November 25, 2013 to probe the case, CBI began investigations in February 2014.
In the first arrest in the case, Muzaffarpur Municipal Corporation ward councilor Rakesh Kumar Sinha Pappu was arrested on September 5, 2017. Pappu, who was allegedly present in front of Navaruna’s house when the drain was being cleaned, knew of the plot to abduct and kill her and also played a role in it. Several criminal cases, including involvement in a train robbery, are pending against him with Muzaffarpur police.