Cuffs on train ‘tormentor’

OUR BUREAU

Calcutta, July 27: A 39-year-old man has been arrested from Uttarpara and identified by police as the person who chased a young TCS employee in the near-empty ladies’ compartment of the Delhi-Howrah Janata Express last Sunday till she fell off near Belur station. Deb Shankar Sau was picked up around 8.30 last night by the government railway police (GRP), who were armed with a sketch drawn on the basis of a description given by the victim. The police had also activated their “sources” to trace Sau. The victim is yet to identify him, though. “We are certain about his involvement. Why else would he change his looks by trimming his moustache and sporting a new hairstyle?” an investigating officer said. Officers said Sau had a criminal record and had “confessed” to stealing the woman’s cellphone but denied attempting to molest her. “The accused has admitted to stealing the mobile phone of the woman and selling it off to a person in Uttarpara,” said Milan Kanti Das, superintendent of the GRP in Howrah. “We hope to recover the mobile phone. Once that is done, the link will be clearly established.” Sau, driver of a motorised van, lives in a shanty near Uttarpara railway station. He was on his way home last night when the police swooped on him. Another officer said Sau had been arrested in 2012 in connection with a robbery in Singur. “A few months ago, he was arrested again in a petty case involving the theft of iron-ore dust in Howrah.” A few days ago, when the police had started tracking Sau, they learnt that he had left home saying he was going to take up a part-time job at a construction site in the locality. He did not turn up at the site, though. The police said Sau had boarded the train at Serampore. The victim saw him at Bandel when all other passengers in the ladies’ compartment had got off. “After she fell off the moving train (the victim is unsure whether she fell or was pushed), he thought she was dead. So he too jumped off when the train slowed between Belur and Liluah,” an officer said.