Kolkata: Police in West Bengal have arrested a man believed to be the main accused in the sexual assault of a 74-year-old nun.
Nazrul, a 28-year-old Bangladeshi national, was arrested at the Sealdah railway station when he was getting off a local train Wednesday evening.
The nun was raped in March during an attack at a convent school.
“Our sources informed us that Nazrul was trying to reach Kolkata. Working on the tip-off, our officers were waiting for him at Sealdah station and caught him when he was getting down from Bongaon local (suburban train),” said senior police officer Chittaranjan Nag.
The police suspect Nazrul had been hiding along the border with Bangladesh since the attack that triggered shock and anger across the country, reports ndtv.com.
“He was hiding somewhere in the border areas of Bangladesh. Probably after he was chased by the police there, he sneaked past the border to get into India. He was trying to flee somewhere,” said Mr Nag.
Six people have been arrested so far for the attack on March 14 in Ranaghat, about 100 km north of Kolkata. The attackers vandalized the school before breaking into the nuns’ quarters, locking them in a room and raping one of them.
The nun needed surgery after the assault. The pace of investigations had led to anger against the Bengal police and government last year.
The case shocked India and led to street protests in many cities across the country. Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed “deep concern” over the crime.
Senior West Bengal police official Dilip Kumar Adak has previously said all eight alleged attackers had been identified, and Friday’s announcement takes the number of suspects held to eight.
During the attack in Ranaghat town on 14 March money was stolen from the convent school and the building ransacked, before the nun was raped in the convent itself.
The attack had sent shockwaves through the country’s Christian community.
The police had identified all eight people who broke into the Convent of Jesus and Mary High School using CCTV footage.
One had been hired by the nuns to do construction work. All those arrested so far are Bangladeshi, according to police.
In the weeks following the March attack, Christians in the country, who make up 2.3 percent of the population, spoke of their fear, with one pastor wondering if the break-in was part of a wider campaign “to marginalize minorities in India.”
India is home to tens of thousands of Bangladeshis who officials say cross illegally into the country, mainly through borders in West Bengal, Tripura and Assam.
The two countries share a 4,000-kilometre border, part of which has been fenced by India in a bid to prevent illegal immigrants entering.
The immigration issue has driven a wedge between northeast India’s Bengali-speaking population and local tribal and ethnic inhabitants, with Muslims bearing the brunt of decades of mistrust.