A 22-year-old woman was gang-raped by a group of four men in Maharashtra’s Aurangabad district on Thursday night.
The victim, employee of a private firm and resident of Beed district, was on a visit to Aurangabad. She was with a friend on Thursday evening, when a group of four came on a motorbike. While two persons held and beat up her friend, the others dragged the woman to a nearby field, and all of them raped her taking turns, senior inspector Priya Thorat of the Chikalthana police station told The Hindu .
The victim’s friend managed to record the number of the motorcycle on the basis of which the police traced and arrested Tayyub Sheikh. Despite the arrest of one of the perpetrators, the police said they still had to ascertain the identity of the other three accused.
Sheikh and the other unidentified accused person have been booked under the Indian Penal Code Sections 376D (gang rape), 323 (punishment for voluntarily causing hurt), 506 (punishment for criminal intimidation), 109 (punishment of abetment) and 114 (abettor present when offence is committed) after a complaint by the victim.
Though the victim is a Dalit, the police did not invoke provisions of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, as the identities of the perpetrators were not known at the time of registering the FIR. “After we locate and verify the identities and caste of the other accused persons, we will apply the Atrocity Act accordingly,” Ms. Thorat said.
Medical examination of the victim confirmed the rape, police said.
