Mumbai(MID-DAY):A 16-year-old girl’s decision to seek the ‘protection’ of her male friends on a walk back home through an isolated stretch ended in catastrophe, when the six youths gang-raped her in the cover of darkness. The minor was violated at knifepoint near Santosh Nagar Bridge in Goregaon (East). No arrests have been made so far.
According to the Dindoshi police, the incident took place last Friday, when two of the young girl’s friends Wasim and Asgar invited her to the MHADA Colony flat shared by four of their friends – identified as Surya, Kaalu, Rahul and Arjun. They said that a pooja was being held at the home on the occasion of Dhanteras. Once the pooja was over at the apartment around 10 pm, the girl expressed anxiety at the prospect of going home alone at the late hour. The boys offered to escort her up to the bridge. But they had other, more sinister plans.
Taking advantage of the isolation, the boys took her to a lonely spot near the bridge and brandished a knife to subdue her, after which they took turns violating her in an ordeal that lasted nearly two hours. The girl managed to make it home and narrated the entire episode to her mother, who accompanied her to Dindoshi police station.
Cops refuse to register the case
When a teen girl in Mumbai went to a police station with her relative to disclose that she had been gang-raped, she was allegedly dismissed because she said she knew some of her attackers and had agreed to let them escort her home.
The 16-year-old was gang-raped by four men on Friday night. They are missing; so are two other men who allegedly helped them.
“An inquiry has been ordered (for why the case was not registered),” said Jaywant Mane, a senior inspector at the police station in the western suburb of Goregaon, where the young girl was assaulted in an open drain underneath a bridge.
Her complaint was finally recorded by the police on Sunday, after a social worker intervened.
The survivor reportedly knew all of the six suspects and agreed to join them at an apartment in Goregaon, a western suburb of Mumbai for a puja linked to the festival season.
After the ceremony ended, she said she was worried about walking home alone at night.
The men offered to escort her but then forced her into the drain, made her drink beer and then took turns to rape her. They left her lying there, and she walked home, said sources.
In August, the gang-rape of a young photographer at a deserted mill in the heart of Mumbai outraged the country. Five men are being tried at a special fast-track court; the 22-year-old survivor fainted recently in the court-room while sharing her testimony.
