KOLKATA: As police sifted through a tangle of truths and half-truths in the sensational claim of rape in a moving car, chief minister Mamata Banerjee and her trusted aide, minister Madan Mitra , came out with hasty reactions on Thursday.Mamata said the woman’s complaint was “fabricated”. “Sajano golpo (a fabricated story),” she said at Writers’ Buildings. On Wednesday, she had said the woman had filed the complaint late. Mitra made a big deal out of the fact that the victim had a few drinks and went to a nightclub. “Why did a woman with kids at home, who is separated from her husband, go to a nightclub? For all you know, she may still be drinking at a club,” he said during a panel discussion on a TV channel.Seven days after the complaint was lodged, police are no closer to the truth. They have spotted several inconsistencies in the victim’s complaint, though. All the accused seem to have watertight alibis and there seem to be discrepancies in her statement. Initially, she said she was dumped by the gang at Exide crossing but on Thursday she admitted she was thrown out on Hungerford Street. Also, she had claimed to have taken a taxi to her home after the incident, whereas police have found that she was given a lift by a friend, Farooq, the younger son of former assembly Speaker Hashim Abdul Halim.The forensic report, however, corroborates she was assaulted. But the test was carried out too late for it to prove rape. The examination showed bruises on her neck, knees, lips and the inside of her mouth, say sources. The nature of the injuries seems consistent with the date on which she claims to have been raped.The victim says that the rapist pulled a pistol from his pocket and shoved it in her mouth. But police wonder how the accused took a gun past the metal detector at the nightclub.Police picked up two of the three men she had named in the FIR — Azhar Ali and Sharafat Ali — from their homes on Collins Street and in Kidderpore on Wednesday night, within hours of the woman going public with her story. She identified the duo as the key accused, especially Sharafat as the one who raped her.But police stopped short of arresting them because they have strong alibis. Police tracked their cellphone tower locations and found out that they were at their homes during the alleged incident.Police commissioner R K Pachnanda said” “We are investigating the case with utmost importance and impartiality.”Significantly, another key accused in the FIR, Lavi Gidwani, was in Canada during the alleged rape. Immigration information from Kolkata and Toronto airports confirm that Gidwani has been in Toronto since January 2.The victim had identified Gidwani’s photograph and said that he was the one who had approached her at the nightclub and introduced her to Sharafat and Azhar.However, she later said she had made a mistake in her identification. In the photograph Gidwani does not have beard, but the accused had a French-cut, she said. She also retracted from her statement that she was pushed from the Honda Civic near Exide crossing. In her new statement, she told police that she was dumped on Hungerford Street, from where she took a taxi to reach the Kyd Street home of Farooq Halim, who escorted her home.On Thursday, she claimed that she called Farooq for help. But her call details show that it was Farooq who had called her, at 3.31am, say police. Farooq could not give police a satisfactory answer why he had called her at that hour. He told investigators that he found her in distress. When she told him that she had been raped, he advised her to go to police and undergo a medical test. But she said that she was too much in trauma to undergo any further hassle.Even through there are discrepancies, police are busy in trying to find more clues to corroborate her complaint. “We have asked the forensic science department whether these injuries indicate any kind of sexual violence on her,” said joint commissioner (crime) Damayanti Sen.Azhar and Sharafat, partners in a call centre, said they were at a Milad-ul-Nabi festival at Azhar’s home on Collin Street on the evening on February 5. After the programme was over, they went to Russel Dhaba at 8pm for dinner. Azhar dropped Sharafat at his Kidderpore home in his Honda Civic car and returned home.“Their phone calls showed that they were in their homes,” said an investigator. Police have asked for the video footage of the programme at Azhar’s home and are also checking the social networking site chatroom where the duo claimed to have chatted with their friends on that night.If the victim is lying, what was her motive? Police have no answer to that. “We are yet to find any clue to establish that the victim and the accused knew each other. The call details of the last few days do not show any link between the victim and the accused,” said an investigator.The only clue (a far-fetched one) police found is that the victim had some problems with her sister who runs a call centre at Gariahat. The victim had a stake in the BPO but wanted get out to start her own call centre. Her sister and the sister’s boyfriend, however, refused to pay back her stake’s worth. Sharafat, Gidwani and Azhar are pals of the boyfriend of the victim’s sister.