A report on the alleged torture and subsequent death of a three-year-old girl child in West Bengal’s Purulia district, submitted to the West Bengal Commission for Protection of Child Rights (WBCPCR), has cited child marriage, extreme poverty, ‘provocation’ and ‘emotional immaturity’ as the key reasons behind the incident. The report was recently submitted to the WBCPCR by the District Magistrate of Purulia. The child died at the State-run SSKM Hospital on July 21 following alleged torture by one Sanatan Thakur, who inserted needles into her body. He was arrested on last Monday.
Mother’s silence
In a release issued on Sunday, the WBCPCR described the report as a ‘Social Enquiry Report of Purulia Case’. Elaborating upon the role of child marriage in the incident, the report stated that the mother of the deceased child Mangala Goswami married at the age of 15. “She [Ms. Goswami] was first married off at the age of 15 to a married person who had a living wife and a daughter and became mother at the age of 17,” states the report. It further states that Ms. Goswami “kept mum even after seeing her own child being brutally sexually tortured to death”.
As for the role of “extreme poverty” in the incident, the report states that Ms. Goswami’s family was “traditionally very poor”. It also says that she was “induced to marry Sanatan Thakur, the alleged culprit of the case, for financial support.”
The report also states that Thakur used Ms. Goswami as “bait for earning money from his Kirtan parties”.
“The reason behind the report is to trace the broader social reasons for such a brutality on a child,” WBCPCR chairperson chairperson Ananya Chatterjee Chakraborti told The Hindu.