IIM-C rape case: Investigators find allegations of security lapses by institute authorities 'baseless'

Kolkata, July 17 (IANS) As the investigators looking into the matter pertaining to the rape of an outsider woman within the campus of the iconic Indian Institute of Management -Calcutta (IIM-C) at Joka in the southern outskirts of Kolkata earlier this month are going deeper in the probe process, initial allegations about lapses in the security system of the institute are turning out to be baseless.

Insiders from the city police said that initially, information surfaced from the statement that the victim recorded with the local Haridevpur Police station was that she was able to reach the room of the accused at the boys’ hostel, bypassing the rules for multiple visitors’ entries, starting from entering the campus till reaching the boys’ hostel.

However, as per the investigation in the matter so far and the documents submitted by the institute authorities to the investigating official, this allegation of bypassing multiple visitors’ entry registrations was totally baseless.

In addition to that, the accused in the case, Parmanand Mahaveer Toppannavar a.k.a. Parmanand Jain (26), a second-year student of the institute, even informed the IIM-C authorities about the scheduled visit of the victim woman as a visitor through an email a day before, as per the security protocol requirement of the institute.

The accused is currently in police custody, and he will be presented at the trial court again on Saturday. Already, several confusions in the case have surfaced following total non-cooperation by the victim woman and her family in the process of investigation.

The first non-cooperation on the part of the victim woman had been that despite repeated insistence from the city police, the victim did not turn up to undergo the mandatory medico-legal examination.

Secondly, she failed to turn up at the trial court earlier this week to get her confidential statement recorded in front of a judicial magistrate.

Finally, she is yet to submit to the police the clothes that she was wearing during the reported incident of rape that took place at the boy’s hostel of IIM-C on the evening of July 11.

Above all, the contradictory statements from the victim and her father on the reported incident of rape are also creating utter confusion in the matter, with her father claiming from the beginning that nothing wrong had happened to her daughter.

The victim’s father stuck to his statement even as a trial court on July 12 remanded the sole accused in the case, Parmanand Mahaveer Toppannavar a.k.a. Parmanand Jain (26), to police custody till July 19.

--IANS

src/pgh