The day after the second survivor of a gang-rape at Shakti Mill lodged a complaint, the Mumbai Police said one of the accused who has fled Maharashtra and three Police teams are looking for him.
The survivor had alleged that she was raped by five men at Shakti Mill on July 31, three of them later arrested for the gang-rape of the photojournalist at the same spot. Of the other two accused, the police then managed to arrest a juvenile on Tuesday night.
The alleged rapist, who the police are now looking for is Ashfaque Shaikh, 22, a resident of Mumbra from neighbouring Thane district is a habitual criminal with two cases of theft of railway property registered against him. The police have found his photograph from one of the earlier complaints. The juvenile too has five theft cases registered against him.
The other three accused in the second case are Vijay Jadhav, Quasim Bangali and Salim Ansari, who initially raped the woman and later called other two.
These accused had admitted of committing the same crime with a rag picker and a commercial sex worker at Shakti Mill. However none of them have registered any police complaint yet. The accused have also confessed to have raped a eunuch, who according to police sources was a member of their group and has also not come forward to register a complaint.
“None of the survivors were robbed. They left all the survivors near the railway track and never on road, as there was no one to help them. It gave them time to vacate the compound area and scared survivor never complained,” said an official. The police feel if the second survivor had complained about the incident on July 31 itself, the gangrape of photojournalist could have been averted.
The second victim, who along with her boyfriend fled to Chhattisgarh after the incident, got married with him there. “As per our information, her mother was opposed to their marriage. They had decided to run away from home and to return only after getting married,” said an officer. The couple who met on the evening of July 31 by 6 PM was supposed to meet a caterer at 9.30 PM, to fix about small get-together. “They had gone to Mill compound as they had no other work to do till their meeting with the caterer. But the events took an ugly turn there,” he said.
Meanwhile, the juvenile accused in the photojournalist gang-rape case was taken for identification parade on Wednesday. According to sources, both the survivor and her colleague have identified him.
