Kolkata, Sep 18 (IANS) The working committee of South Calcutta Law College (New Campus) at Kasba, which was in the headlines earlier this year because of the rape of a student within the college premises, on Thursday refused to accept the resignation of Vice-Principal, Noyna Chatterjee.

Amid large-scale criticisms from various quarters over her role as a college administrator following the rape incident, Chatterjee, earlier this week, tendered her resignation. An urgent meeting of the college’s working committee was convened on Thursday to decide on whether or not to accept her resignation.

At the end of the meeting, the working committee members refused to accept Chatterjee’s resignation and instead asked her to continue in the post for some more time. The Working Committee President and Trinamool Congress legislator Ashok Kumar Deb especially requested Chatterjee to continue, which she accepted, said a college insider aware of the developments in the meeting.

In the meeting, one of the working committee members pointed out that the name of the prime accused and the perpetrator in the crime of rape, Monojit Mishra, a former student and a contractual staff member of the college, was still visible in different wall graffiti within the college campus, as the erstwhile students’ union leader.

A decision was thereafter taken that these graffiti would be washed out only after the college reopened after the forthcoming festival vacation.

While Mishra was identified as the principal perpetrator in the crime of rape and murder, the two other accused, and then present students of the college, namely Jaib Ahmed and Pramit Mukhopadhyay, were identified as the facilitators in that crime.

Mishra was quite influential and close to several heavyweight ruling party leaders in the state, as claimed by the other students of the college.

The two other accused in the case were also quite active members of Trinamool Chhatra Parishad (TMCP), the students’ wing of the Trinamool in the state.

Following the incident of rape, the role of the Vice-Principal came under the scanner of the media as well as the investigating officials for allegedly ignoring the criminal antecedents of the prime accused, Mishra, not only while giving him a contractual appointment in the same college but also allowing him to use different rooms within the college campus, like the latter’s parental property.

Several questions were raised about Chatterjee’s interactions with the accused persons in the crime of rape on the day of the incident.

–IANS

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