The kin of two of the accused in the gang-rape case of a teenage girl in Rewari last year allegedly put pressure on the victim’s family to reach a compromise and threatened them with dire consequences. Five persons, including four women, were arrested in the matter and later let off on bail, the police said.
According to the FIR, accused Nishu’s parents, Rajesh and Gingodi, along with three women, reached the house of the victim’s aunt in a village in Mahendergarh on February 26 and put pressure on them to withdraw the gang-rape case.
They also allegedly threatened to implicate the girl’s siblings in a criminal case and abduct and kill them. They warned the family that the police could not protect them forever and that they would kill the girl’s siblings as soon as they would get the opportunity.
“The three women were the mother, sister and wife of another accused Pankaj, an Army jawan. They abused and threatened us. I was also present at the time of the incident,” said the girl’s paternal uncle, who has been staying at his sister’s for the past three decades since the death of her husband.
The five had come around 10 a.m.
The girl’s father said they informed the police after his sister told them about the incident and an FIR was registered on February 27. “Since we have been provided police protection, they did not come to us and instead went to my sister,” said the girl’s father.
Dongra Ahir police post in-charge Assistant Sub-Inspector Sukhbir Singh said that raids were mounted twice at the houses of the accused after the registration of the FIR, but they could not be found.
“Later, we served them notices and their relatives produced them before us. Rajesh was arrested on March 8 and the women, Gingodi, Sulochna, Manisha and Dhauli were arrested the next day. They were produced before the court and granted bail. Sulochna is Pankaj’s mother, while Dhauli is his wife,” said Mr. Singh.
The FIR was registered on charges of house-trespass and criminal intimidation under the Indian Penal Code, the police said.
The 19-year-old victim was on her way to a coaching centre in Mahendergarh in September last year when Pankaj, along with Nishu and Manish, allegedly abducted her, took her to a room in the fields and raped her. The three men were arrested for the crime.
The victim and the accused belong to the same village.
The case is under trial at the court of Additional Sessions Judge Anil Kumar, a designated special court for crime against women in Mahendergarh. The next hearing of the gang-rape case has been fixed for April 6.
