Residents of West Bengal, India, have protested for several days following the rape and murder of an 11-year-old girl, during which enraged citizens mistakenly beat an unrelated man to death.
Foreign news agencies reported on 9 Jul 2026 that the rape and murder case of an 11-year-old girl in West Bengal over the past weekend sparked widespread public outrage and intense protests lasting several days, culminating in the fatal beating of an innocent man.
The incident began when an 11-year-old girl from the village of Surjyapur, on the outskirts of Kolkata, went missing after going out to buy a birthday gift for a friend. Her family filed a missing person report with the police on Saturday, 4 Jul, but the police showed little urgency and said they would investigate the next day.
Relatives and villagers took it upon themselves to review CCTV footage, discovering the girl walking with Prabhash Mondal. Locals then apprehended him on Sunday morning and handed him over to the police.
The girl's body was later found stuffed in a sack and dumped in a pond. The autopsy indicated death by drowning, suggesting she may have been alive when thrown into the water, which deeply angered her family, who blamed police delays for her death.
The discovery of the body provoked violent protests involving destruction of roads, shops, and train stations, as well as the fatal beating of an innocent young man. Several police officers were injured, vehicles damaged, and the government imposed a ban on gatherings and deployed troops to control the area.
Police arrested three additional suspects, but the main suspect, Prabhash Mondal, was killed in a police shootout. Authorities claimed that during a crime reconstruction at the pond, Mondal tried to grab an officer's gun and opened fire, forcing police to shoot him in self-defense.
However, human rights groups and opposition politicians have questioned whether this was a staged event, though no conclusive evidence exists. Mondal's mother reportedly distanced herself from him and refused to claim his body for funeral rites.
This incident has placed enormous pressure on the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the ruling party that recently won West Bengal's May elections by campaigning on women's safety—a factor that contributed to the defeat of former Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, whose government had poorly handled a previous rape-murder case involving a trainee doctor.
The case has escalated religious tensions since the victim was Muslim and the suspects Hindu. Additionally, BJP local leaders' homes were attacked amid accusations they aided the suspects, though the leaders have denied these claims.
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Source:bbc