Rapists getting more brazen in India’s largest state.
By The American Bazaar Staff
NEW DELHI: Uttar Pradesh continues to be a black mark on India’s reputation, as the state continues to struggle in stopping the growing number of rapes and sexual assaults of women that have plagued it for the last couple of months.
Rapists in India’s most populous state seem to not only show no signs of slowing down, but are getting even more brazen in their criminal acts.
In a new case that emerged from Muzaffarnagar on Tuesday, eight young men gang-raped a 20 year-old girl and then posted a video of the incident on Facebook.
The unnamed victim told police that five men actually had intercourse with her, while the other three videotaped the encounter on a camera, reports the Press Trust of India. Initially, the woman was fearful of reporting the incident, thinking that her attackers would upload the video if she went to the police; however, after finding out that the video had been uploaded anyway, she filed the complaint.
Police in Muzaffarnagar have arrested four individuals in connection to the Facebook gang-rape, while an extensive manhunt has been launched to find the remaining four. The names of the eight men are: Rashid, Wasik, Abdul Rehman, Shokan, Abul, Monu, Rahul and Salau. So far, only the first four have been nabbed.
Perhaps even more horrifying is the gang-rape of a seven year-old girl, also in Muzaffarnagar, by three men. The incident allegedly happened on Sunday when the girl went into a field to “relieve herself,” according to the Indo-Asian News Service.
The girl’s condition is not good, and she is currently listed as “critical” in a nearby hospital. Her parents registered the complaint with local authorities, who have caught and interrogated one of the men involved with the attack; the other two have absconded and are currently being searched for.
On Monday, another minor – this one 16 years of age – told police that she had been kidnapped for 20 days, held by four men who not only continuously gang-raped her, but meant to sell her to human sex traffickers in Nepal.
PTI reports that the girl was abducted by a man named Vijaypal and his nephew, Chinku, on June 1, in the city of Etwah. The two, along with Chinku’s father Takau and another individual, who is only identified as being from Varanasi, took the girl north while sexually assaulting her day in and day out.
Last week, after nearly a month in captivity, she was finally able to escape and file a complaint with the local police department. The girl is currently recovering in a hospital, while police were able to catch the uncle and his nephew; the other two men are still on the loose.