Kolkata, February 19
The city police and the state government, under fire for not arresting culprits named, identified and accused of raping a 37-year old woman in a moving car, redeemed themselves by arresting three persons, 10 days after the incident was first reported to the police on February 9.

The victim, a mother of two teenagers, had caused a sensation, first by identifying the culprits through social networking site Facebook, and then by appearing in a TV studio to give a blow by blow account of what she went through. Her candid confession that she was alone and was drinking in a night club till well past midnight had also caused a public furore.

She had confidently named the culprits as Lavi Gidwani, Sharafat Ali and Azhar Ali. She was befriended by them in a night club and offered a lift to the nearest taxi, she claimed. But once she got into the Honda Civic car, four more people forced their way in and one of them raped her at gun point.

Police claimed there were inconsistencies in her version of events and made no attempt to arrest the accused. The Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee dismissed the case as a concocted story designed to malign her government. A senior cabinet minister, Madan Mitra, wondered on TV why the mother of two was in the night club in the first place. The comments drew widespread criticism and the police was condemned for not arresting the culprits.

But then Lavi Gidwani, the police found out, has been in Toronto since January. Information from mobile towers also indicated that the other people, identified by the woman, were nowhere near the night club around the time the crime was said to have been committed.

Police fell back on CCTV footage and claimed to have zeroed in on an entirely new group of people, who allegedly impersonated Gidwani and his friends to befriend the woman. That some of them had physical resemblance to Gidwani and his friends, made it easier for them to pull it off. Sumit Bajaj, Nasir Ali and Ruman Khan, now in police custody, visited the same gym frequented by Gidwani and friends. Kader, who raped the woman, is at large and is on the run.