Five individuals have been arrested by Uttar Pradesh’s Ayodhya police on Friday in connection with an alleged gang rape of a cleaning staff at the Ram Janmabhoomi temple.
According to the victim, who is also a third-year BA student, one of the accused Vansh Chaudhary, a resident of Sahadatganj in Ayodhya district, was the victim’s friend of four years.
“On August 16 he took me to a guest house and confined me there. After some time, Vansh along with two others gang raped me. He then invited three more friends and the trauma continued,” she was quoted by Telegraph Today.
“From the guest house, they took me to a barrage in Banvirpur and again assaulted me. They released me on August 18,” she said.
The victim was threatened by her abusers that they would do the same with her younger sisters and kill her family if she reported the matter to the police.
Her ordeal was not yet over as on August 25, while on her way to the Ram Janmabhoomi temple, she was again abducted by Vansh and three others in a car who allegedly tried to sexually assault her.
“They tried to assault me in the car but rammed into a divider and I got time to run away,” the Telegraph Today reported.
According to local reports, the victim approached the police on August 26 but her complaint was not registered. The areas where the crime took place are high-level security zones in Ayodhya.
On September 2, the victim’s case was finally registered. Police officer of Cantt police station Amrendra Singh informed that a total of five persons, including Vansh, Vinay, Shariq, Shiva and Udit, have been arrested in relation to the case. They have been sent to judicial remand.
The police have registered a case under sections 127(2) (wrongful confinement), 75 (sexual harassment) and 70(1) (gangrape) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita.
Akhilesh demands strict action
Meanwhile, Samajwadi Party (SP) chief Akhilesh Yadav on Saturday demanded strict punishment for the accused and punitive action against “irresponsible policemen”
Yadav shared on X a 13-second clip of the woman narrating her ordeal, including lack of cooperation from the police.
“The video statement of a gang-rape victim in Ayodhya has revealed the root cause of the increasing cases of harassment and atrocities against women in Uttar Pradesh, how the victim had to suffer to file a report due to some insensitive policemen,” he said in the post accompanying the video.
“Due to the complexity of filing a report, many crimes are not even registered, which boosts the criminals’ morale,” he said in Hindi.
(With PTI inputs)
