Bengal: Protest in district court against sexual abuse of ashram inmate

A demonstration was held by SUCI youth and women's wings at the Jalpaiguri district court on Thursday against alleged sexual abuse of an inmate of an ashram here and the gangrape of a girl.

The protestors, belonging to All India Democratic Students Organisation and All India Mahila Sanskritik Sanghathan, demanded that other hostel residents of the Gaudiya Math ashram be examined medically to check whether they had been subjected to any sexual abuse.

The protestors demanded that both the ashram authorities and the affected children be produced before the court. A monk of the ashram and two minor boys were apprehended by police earlier this week for sexually assaulting a 11-year-old boy.

They also demanded that power connections be provided in the sparsely populated araes of the town and police patrolling be introduced to prevent any instance of rape. A standard nine girl was gangraped in the town and left in a lonely stretch for the night by her tomentors recently.

The other demands were prohibiting the screening of blue films and closure of all unlicensed liquor dens. AIDSO district secretary Sujoy Lodh said said the police refused to take the memorandum by the protestors yesterday and demanded the court's interference.

The demonstration affected work at the court and the police detained most of the protestors. Traffic in the area was hit for over 2 hours.