india

Updated: Sep 03, 2014 22:53 IST

A day after she openly challenged the verdict of a village kangaroo court chaired by a local Trinamool Congress leader, the naked body of a teenage girl was found near the railway tracks in Jalpaiguri.

Her father has accused local TMC leaders and supporters of raping and murdering her. The 15 year old girl, who was a class X student of the local school in Dhupgiri in West Bengal, went missing immediately after the meeting ended late on Monday night.

She had accompanied her father to a 'salishi' or meeting called by Namita Roy, the TMC councillor of the municipality. At the meeting, TMC leaders headed by Chandrakanta Roy, the husband of Namita, asked the father to pay some money to a contractor Anil Burman from whom he had hired a tiller. When the father expressed his inability to pay immediately, he was assaulted, at which the girl protested.

The father said in his police complaint that after the meeting ended around 11:30 pm, the girl suddenly went missing and that hours later her body was found by the railway tracks. The complaint names Namita Roy, her husband and 11 other TMC workers.

The General Railway Police are now investigating the case and Anil Burman the main accused has been arrested, said Jalpaiguri's Superintendent of Police Kunal Agarwal.

Activists of the left wing Students Front of India (SFI) and Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI) the students called for a strike in all educational institutes and demonstrated outside the police station.