Mumbai: She was in the middle of her birthday celebration, about to cut her cake when she was getting repeated calls and WhatsApp messages that left her visibly disturbed. Her aunt noticed that the girl was distraught, and asked her if something was bothering her. And that’s when the torture that she was secretly enduring for the last nearly nine months finally came out.
This was the beginning of how a tragic crime, where a 15-year-old school girl was allegedly raped by 33 people at different places in the Thane district since January this year, came to light. The Thane Police have arrested 28 people so far, including two minors, and are on the lookout for the rest.
“We called all our expert officers and formed four teams. In the first five hours after the girl’s complaint, we arrested about 23 of the accused. Now the number of arrests has reached 28 (as of Friday morning),” Sachin Gunjal, a Deputy Commissioner of Police with the Thane Police, told ThePrint.
“The accused are all from poor families and are between 16 and 23 years of age. Some are contract labourers, some are students, some unemployed,” he added.
The survivor is in a government hospital at Kalwa and is physically stable, sources from the Thane Police said.
Survivor knew the main accused for 7 years
According to sources from the Thane Police, the main accused, who first allegedly raped the 15-year-old in January, was known to her since at least 2014.
“They connected in January on Instagram and started talking to each other and meeting often,” a Thane Police officer who did not wish to be named said.
According to the police, the main accused allegedly raped her and made a video recording of the same, which he then used to blackmail her into meeting more of his friends.
“The main accused threatened the girl saying he will make the video viral if she does not cooperate and called her to various places in the Thane district — Dombivli, Badlapur, Murbad, Rabale — where the accused would rape her and make videos,” the police officer further said.
An MLC who visited the family after the incident came to light told ThePrint that girl “comes from a modest background” and lives in a building in Dombivli East. “Her father is a worker in a company and mother is at home. The girl was studying in the ninth standard and had online school because of the pandemic. Her father would leave his mobile phone with her during the day so that she can attend her online classes. That is when she accessed social media sites and started talking regularly to the main accused.”
The MLC added that the family is originally from Maharashtra’s Konkan region and moved to Mumbai sometime in the last decade.
Also read: ‘Rape-murder’ of 6-yr-old in Hyderabad turns into spectacle as scared families lock up daughters
Aunt attempted to lay a trap to catch accused
Sources from the Thane Police as well as the MLC said the survivor first confided in her aunt after the latter got concerned and suspicious on the girl’s birthday.
“She was about to cut her birthday cake and was constantly going in and out to take calls. Her mami (aunt) saw that she was visibly distraught,” the MLC said.
The aunt contacted a social worker for help and together they decided to lay a trap to catch the accused red-handed. They asked the girl to set up a meeting with one of the accused, who called her to another accused’s room in Kolegaon in Thane.
Thane Police sources said the girl left alone in an autorickshaw to meet the accused, with her aunt, the social worker and another male relative in a second auto-rickshaw trailing her. The second autorickshaw, however, had a tyre puncture midway due to which the girl’s aunt and the social worker could not reach on time.
Meanwhile, the survivor shared her live location with her aunt, who called the police and informed them about the series of events. By the time the police reached, two of the six accused present there had left and the girl had been allegedly sexually assaulted once again.
The Manpada police station registered an FIR on 22 September against 29 people based on the survivor’s complaint. A day later, she named four more persons, taking the list of the accused to 33.
(Edited by Neha Mahajan)
Also read: Maharashtra Governor wants special House session after Mumbai ‘rape’, Uddhav points to BJP states