Kolkata, Nov 4 (IANS): The cops of Bankura district police in West Bengal, on Monday, arrested a youth on charges of raping a minor girl, who is a ninth-standard student of a district school.

The accused was also presented at a district court on Monday and the court remanded him to two days of police custody.

This is the fourth incident of rape involving minor victims that has been reported from the state in the last 48 hours, the previous three being at Kumargram in Alipurduar district, Domkal in Murshidabad district and Gaighata in North 24 Paragans district.

It is learnt that the victim girl went to her paternal aunt’s place with her mother on the occasion of Kali Puja. On November 2 evening, she suddenly went missing after she went out.

The tense family members started looking for her but were unable to trace her. Finally, at around 3 a.m. on November 3, she came back home profusely crying. Thereafter, she confided to her mother that she was abducted by a local youth, taken to a nearby forest area and then raped.

On November 3, the victim’s family members lodged an FIR at the local Jaipur Police Station. The police started the investigation but initially were unable to trace the accused youth.

However, finally, on getting information from their sources that the accused youth was hiding at his elder sister’s residence, the cops conducted raid operations there on early Monday morning and nabbed the accused.

The victim’s mother complained that previously the same youth tried to enter into a relationship with her daughter which the latter refused. “Probably, he committed such a macabre crime on my daughter out of that grudge for refusal,” the victim’s mother said.

West Bengal has been in the news for the last three months over repeated reports of rape, rape-murders, with the victims in many cases being minor.

The most talked-about tragedy on this count was the ghastly rape and murder of a junior doctor of R.G. Kar Medical College and Hospital in Kolkata within the hospital premises in August this year.