KOLKATA: A 13-year-old girl was gangraped in a moving taxi after being kidnapped from near Park Street on Sunday night, barely 48 hours before the city’s party street ushers in Christmas amidst unprecedented security.

The brutal assault lasted more than four hours, with at least three persons — including the cabby — taking turns to rape her as they drove around the Park Street-Park Circus area. The horrifying crime has opened old scars and raised serious questions about the safety of women and children in the area. The Park Street carnival, which drew hundreds of revelers, including foreigners, had just folded up for the night when the child was abducted.

The girl is a pavement dweller on Park Street and was on her way to a night shelter run by an NGO for children when she was abducted on the lure of a hot meal. Her mother had been sending her to the shelter for the past few days to save her from the biting cold. “Late Sunday evening, the child set off for the shelter, a short walk away, but decided to drop in at the house of a friend on Collin Lane for a short while. She left as soon as her friend’s husband returned around 11pm.

She was walking to the shelter when 32-year-old Md Anwar stopped her near a restaurant on Rafi Ahmed Kidwai Road, say police. He gave her a meal and asked her to wait for “more Christmas goodies”. “According to the FIR, the accused hailed a cab that already had an occupant besides the driver. As the taxi began moving towards Tricona Park on Ripon Street, the accused took turns to rape her inside the taxi,” said an officer. Even the taxi driver join in the sexual assault, says the girl’s complaint.

The child is too traumatized to remember the roads she was drove through. She was dumped back on Rafi Ahmed Kidwai Road around 4am. In the February 2012 Park Street rape, the survivor was assaulted by four to five men in a moving car and dumped at Exide crossing, a short distance away.

The child staggered home and was scolded by her mother for leaving the shelter too early and exposing herself to the cold. The girl could not bring herself to describe her hellish ordeal and meekly followed her mother when she marched to the shelter to demand why they let her leave, said an investigator. When the shelter’s staff explained that the girl had not turned up at their gates, the mother began suspecting that something was amiss. It still took a few hours more for the child to confide in her mother.

She immediately went to Park Street police station, where officers promptly took down an FIR — unlike the February 2012 instance — and arrested Anwar from the restaurant. “We have identified the main accused and arrested him. We are trying to get a lead on the taxi driver or the registration number of the cab. We will not spare anyone. The girl’s statement is being recorded under the supervision of an NGO,” said joint CP-crime Pallab Kanti Ghosh. The girl’s medical examination was conducted at SSKM Hospital.

The number of rapes has almost doubled in Kolkata since 2008 and molestation tripled, says the latest data of the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), which ranks Bengal No. 1 in crimes against women.