New Delhi: A 20-year-old student who filed seven rape cases against seven men at seven police stations in Gurugram has been arrested for allegedly filing a fake sexual assault complaint in a suspected extortion bid.
The woman, an English Honours student at Delhi University, has been booked for alleged extortion, insulting the modesty of a woman, threats for false evidence, criminal intimidation, and criminal conspiracy.
She filed the seven complaints over 14 months beginning September 2020. Three of these cases have already been closed. In two of these, she has been issued notices to appear before court under Section 182 (false information, with intent to cause public servant to use his lawful power to the injury of another person) of the IPC.
Her arrest came after the mother of one of the men she got booked filed a police complaint against her.
“She was arrested Wednesday. The complaint was filed by the mother of a man against whom she had filed an FIR on 24 October 2021, accusing him of rape, in DLF phase 3 police station,” a senior police officer told ThePrint.
The case against the woman has been lodged at New Colony police station.
The allegations surrounding the woman came to light in October.
After activist-filmmaker Deepika Narayan Bhardwaj alleged the cases were fake in a complaint to the Haryana State Commission for Women, the panel, on 26 October, wrote to the state Director General of Police (DGP), P.K. Agarwal, and demanded a special investigation team probe into the matter. This investigation remains under way.
Speaking to ThePrint at the time, the woman had said that the allegations against her were false, and that she was used by all the men she got booked.
About the man whose mother filed the police complaint against her, she said, “The man was living in our rented accommodation for a while and we started talking. We started seeing each other. We met on 17 October at Ambience Mall. He manipulated me, saying he will marry me, and took me to a hotel and raped me.”
The family of the man, who wasn’t arrested, however alleges that they were blackmailed by the woman and her family. Their complaint to police has been accessed by ThePrint.
“The man’s family was threatened — give money or get married. During the probe, it was found that the woman would ask for money and, if not given, would file a rape complaint,” Gurugram Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) Preetpal Sangwan told ThePrint.
“She has already lodged 7 such complaints — for extortion. The woman runs a syndicate with her mother and her uncle,” Sangwan added.
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In the FIR against the woman, the man’s mother has accused her of repeated “abuse, threats and blackmail” through phone calls and messages against her two sons — the one accused of rape by her and his elder brother.
She has also claimed that the 20-year-old had given “murder” threats to them, which forced them to try and talk to the woman’s family — her mother and an uncle. However, they were again threatened, she said.
According to the FIR, the student and the man started talking around 14 October, right before he shifted to a rented accommodation belonging to her family on 15 October.
“She would repeatedly call my son and abuse and threaten him. She was adamant on one thing — get your son married to me and make him meet me,” the complaint states.
The complaint says the woman and her mother and uncle told the man’s family that they had filed rape cases against other men who were subsequently jailed.
After the family went back to Karnal, the woman’s mother allegedly sent them a copy of the rape FIR on WhatsApp.
Talking about the case, the unnamed officer quoted above said “the mother of the boy provided us with video footage, screenshots and audio recordings as evidence against the woman”.
(Edited by Sunanda Ranjan)