Boyfriends of the girls assaulted.
Two girls, aged 18 and 17, were allegedly gang raped by five youths in front of their friends in outer Delhi’s Aman Vihar area Wednesday.
The gang assaulted the boyfriends of the girls and tied them up to a tree before taking turns to rape the teenagers. The police have taken four of the suspects into custody and a search has been initiated for the fifth one who is on the run, reported The Indian Express.
According to the police, the incident happened around 6 pm on Wednesday, when the girls went out for a walk with their boyfriends in a park area.
When they were walking along the park, the accused came and started misbehaving with them. They demanded that the girls should oblige them sexually.
When the boys objected, the accused thrashed them with sticks and tied them up to a tree. Then they dragged the girls to a nearby bush and raped them taking turns.
“The girls and their friends were chatting when the accused arrived and misbehaved with the girls. When the boys with them objected, the accused assaulted and overpowered them. Then they raped the girls in front of them. The incident happened in an open agricultural field beside the park,” a senior police officer was quoted as saying by The Indian Express.
After raping the girls, the accused threatened them of dire consequences if they approached the police and fled the area.
The girls fainted on the spot before the police and some local people arrived after being informed by the boys. The police have registered a case under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO) at Aman Vihar police station against the five on a complaint filed by the girls.
The police refused to disclose the identity of the arrested as some of them claimed to be minors. One of the accused is pursuing BA through correspondence and others are school dropouts, said the police.
The incident once again raised the question of women safety in the National Capital, four years after the brutal gang rape of a 23-year-old paramedical student in a moving vehicle. The incident came to be known as “Nirbhaya gang-rape.”
In a similar incident, a 23-year-old photojournalist was brutally gang-raped by five persons, including a juvenile, when she had gone to the deserted Shakti Mills compound, near Mahalaxmi in South Mumbai, with a male colleague on an assignment on August 22, 2013.
Last month, a 12-year-old girl was gang-raped and killed by two Ola cab drivers in Kolkata. Her naked body was recovered from a canal in the city.
Though the laws for women safety have been revamped after the “Nirbhaya gang rape” case, the safety of women still remains an unresolved issue.