Soumitra Nandi
KOLKATA: The detective department of the city police on Wednesday filed the chargesheet in the gang rape of a Japanese researcher who had put up in a hotel at Sudder Street in New Market area in Central Kolkata.

The 82 page chargesheet was filed before the Chief Metropoliitan Magistrate of Bankshal Court within 73 days the detective department took up the probe of the case. “The chargesheet has been  filed  against 7 accused. Six of the arrested persons are in judicial custody while one has been shown as absconding,” said Pallab Kanti Ghosh, joint commissioner (crime) of the city police.

In January the detective department had busted a gang of touts and guides that trapped tourists and sexually exploited them across three states — Bengal, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh while taking up the investigation of the gang rape of the Japanese researcher. They arrested five accused from Kolkata and Fatehpur near Gaya. Later on another group D staff of the Indian Museum was also nabbed in connection to the incident

The Japanese woman had narrated her plight to the Japan Consulate in Kolkata after which on December 26, 2014 the consulate wrote to the Kolkata police commissioner about how a 23-year-old Japanese woman was gang-raped in Kolkata, Digha, Gaya and Varanasi in November-December and robbed of Rs 76,000.

According the chargesheet, the woman had arrived in Kolkata on November 20 last year and put up at a hotel in Sudder Street. This is where she got in touch with some local guides, one of whom turned out to be a member of the gang. She was not well conversant in English, and he trapped her by being "extremely helpful."

Two of the 'guides' offered to take her sightseeing and she agreed to visit Digha on November 23. She was sexually assaulted there and forced to part with her ATM card through which the accused withdrew Rs 76,000. She was brought to Kolkata on November 25 and handed over to other members of the gang who took her to Gaya at gunpoint. However, they stopped 45km before Gaya at Fatehpur and she was confined to a hotel room for more than two weeks where at least two men raped her. She was put in a bus for Varanasi in the second week of December.

It was in Varanasi that the traumatized woman met other tourists from Japan and was able to recount her horrifying experience. Some of the tourists told her they, too, had faced similar behaviour from guides in Kolkata and they decided to approach the Japanese consulate for help. She returned to Kolkata on Christmas to pursue the case.