New Delhi: Having witnessed the Ganga Aarti at Varanasi’s Dashashwamedh ghat, she was waiting for an auto-rickshaw to go home when four bike-borne men allegedly abducted, assaulted and gang-raped her in Phulpur on 19 May, the 17-year-old told the police.
A resident of a village near Sindhora in Basantpura in Uttar Pradesh’s Varanasi district, she had taken an auto-rickshaw from the ghat to Babatpur after witnessing the aarti and was waiting for another auto-rickshaw to travel further to her village.
Police said the accused, all on separate bikes, assaulted the girl around 9 pm when she shot back at them for passing comments about her. According to reports in the local media, she was then allegedly abducted and taken to a primary school where she was gang-raped.
The accused, said the FIR, also filmed the act. According to the FIR, one of the accused then escorted the complainant to her neighbourhood and threatened her against confiding in anyone or they would leak the video and harm her family.
The girl narrated her ordeal to the police when a video of the crime reached her cousin and he informed the family about it. The minor filed a First Information Report (FIR) at the Phulpur police station on 25 May under Sections 376D (gang rape), 506 (criminal intimidation) of IPC, and relevant sections of the POCSO Act and the IT Act.
The accused have been identified as Golu Gond, Nanak Patel, Suraj Gond, and Amjad Khan in the FIR. The four accused, all from Pura Raghunathpur village of the district, were apprehended the same day after police scanned the CCTV footage, Varanasi Additional Commissioner of Police (ACP) Santosh Kumar Singh said at a press conference Thursday.
The police ruled out enmity as the motive for the crime.
(Edited by Smriti Sinha)
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