18-year-old woman found dead in Bengal; family alleges rape

The partially charred body of an 18-year-old woman was found at Krishnanagar town in Bengal’s Nadia district on Wednesday morning.
Police arrested her 18-year-old male friend from his home after her family lodged a complaint, alleging that she was raped and murdered by him. In her last social media post, published hours before her death, she had said he was responsible for her death.
“He wanted to break up with my sister. I told him to be patient with her as she was upset. Last night, she said she would be going to a pizza outlet with him. We suspect that he and his friends raped and murdered her,” the victim’s sister told the local media.
“We searched for our daughter all night. She was forced to write the Facebook post so that the crime could be passed off as death by suicide,” the victim’s mother added.
Local residents staged protests outside the police station after the body was found near a puja pandal close to an ashram, far away from the victim’s home.
“We arrested the suspect on the basis of the complaint the victim’s parents lodged. The suspect’s parents have also been detained for questioning. We are not sure if the woman died at the spot where her body was found. There was no sign of a fire at that place,” Amarnath K, superintendent of Krishnanagar police division, said.
“There could be two crime scenes. The road on which the body was found leads to an exit point of the town. The footage from security cameras installed in that area is being studied. Only a postmortem examination can determine the cause of death and whether she was raped,” the SP said.
The body was sent to the local Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Hospital for autopsy.