- Saturday, April 12, 2025
The accused used to drug her and take her to several hotels as they passed her on for abuse. The victim went missing from March 29 to April 4
By: India Weekly
A 19-YEAR-OLD woman from Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh was allegedly gang-raped by 23 people over six days.
The accused used to drug her and take her to several hotels as they passed her on for abuse, the police said on Monday (7).
Many of them even took videos of her and the perpetrators took away her mobile phone.
Six of the accused have been arrested and the hunt is on for the rest.
A police officer in Varanasi said the victim had gone out on March 29 but did not return.
Her family filed a missing person report on April 4 when they could not find her.
When the police rescued her, she did not mention about the rape, he said.
However, the survivor’s family on April 6 lodged a complaint alleging that she had been gang-raped.
The woman told the police that between March 29 and April 4, the accused allegedly took her to different hotels and hookah bars and gang-raped raped her, the officer said.
The police said 11 unnamed persons have also been booked.
Out of 12 named accused, six were arrested on Sunday (6), and efforts are on to nab the rest.
The police were questioning staff members of hotels and examining CCTV footage from the area to verify the girl’s account and identify those involved in the alleged crime.
The victim’s mother claimed that on March 29, her daughter had gone to a friend’s house and while returning met Raj Vishwakarma, who took her to his cafe in Lanka.
Raj and his other friend raped her and filmed her.
“The next day, my daughter met a boy named Sameer, who was on a bike with one of his friends. Sameer took her on the bike to a highway and did a ‘bad act’ with her and left the girl at Nadesar,” she alleged.
“The next day, on March 31, a boy named Ayush along with his five other friends named Sohail, Danish, Anmol, Sajid and Zahir took her to Continental Cafe in Sigra and made her drink intoxicants and took turns to rape her. On April 1, a boy named Sajid along with his friend took her to a hotel, where two-three other people were present.
“There, a man raped her and then threw her out. As she was leaving the place, she met a boy named Imran on the way, who also raped her in a hotel after making her drink intoxicants. Later, when the girl screamed, he left her outside the hotel,” the mother alleged in her complaint to the police.
On April 2, a boy named Raj Khan took her to the roof of his house in Hukulganj where he tried to rape her after drugging her. When the woman screamed, the youths took her to Assi Ghat in an intoxicated state and left her there, her mother alleged.
On April 3, a person identified as Danish took her to his friend’s room and there Sohail, Shoaib and some other boy drugged her daughter and raped her. Later, they left her near Chowkghat. The next day on April 4, her daughter came home and told them about her ordeal, the complainant said.
The named accused have been identified as Raj Vishwakarma, Sameer, Ayush, Sohail, Danish, Anmol, Sajid, Zahir, Imran, Jaib, Aman and Raj Khan.
A case has been registered under sections 70(1) (gang rape), 74 (assault or use of criminal force to woman with intent to outrage her modesty), 123 (causing hurt by means of poison, etc., with intent to commit an offence), 126(2) (wrongful restraint), 127(2) (wrongful confinement) and 351(2) (criminal intimidation) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), the police said. (PTI)
