Kolkata, July 8: Pravas Mondal, the first among the three accused to be arrested in the minor girl's death case at Baruipur in South 24 Parganas district of West Bengal last week, was killed in an encounter on early Wednesday morning, as the accused was trying to escape after snatching a service rifle of an escorting police rifle.

State police sources said that he was taken to the crime scene on Tuesday night to reconstruct the incident. There, he allegedly snatched a service rifle from one of the police personnel escorting him and tried to escape.

While the police personnel chased him, according to police, Mondal fired at them from the police rifle that he snatched. The cops resorted to counter-firing, in which Mondal was also shot.

With bullet injuries on his body, the accused was taken to a local hospital, where he was declared dead.

To recall, the body of the 12-year-old minor girl was recovered from a pond in the Suryapur area in Baruipur on Sunday morning. It is alleged that she was raped and murdered. Tension erupted in the area following violent protests after the recovery of the body of the minor girl.

The locals demanded the arrest of the culprits and strict punishment. A six-member Special Investigation Team (SIT) began an investigation into the matter, and Pravas was the first to be arrested that same evening.

Thereafter, following his interrogation, the other two accused in the case, namely Dibakar Sarkar and Ananda Sardar, were arrested, with the latter being the prime accused and the mastermind in the alleged crime against the minor girl.

As per the statement given by locals to the police, the deceased minor was seen with the accused before she went missing on Saturday afternoon. During the investigation, the officials found CCTV footage from the area where Pravas was seen with the minor.
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Based on that CCTV footage, Pravas was arrested. The police claimed that Pravas was not cooperating in the investigation and was giving contradictory answers.

The police wanted to reconstruct the incident and also check Pravas’s role in the sequence of events. For that purpose, the investigating officials took him to the spot early Wednesday morning.

During that reconstruction exercise, the accused tried to escape after snatching the service rifle of an escorting cop. As he fired from that service rifle towards the chasing cops, the police personnel resorted to counter-firing.

--IANS