Chandigarh gangrape: Accused quizzed in another gangrape case

(From left) Mohammad Irfan, Mohammad Garib and Kismat Ali alias Poppu at the district courts in Chandigarh. Express/Files

The Chandigarh Police on Thursday quizzed three gangrape accused — Mohammed Irfan, Mohammed Garbi and Poppu, alias Kismat Ali — in connection with another gangrape with an employee of an IT firm in December 2016.

A team, headed by Inspector Devinder Singh, SHO of Industrial Area police station, visited Sector 36 police station, where three accused were kept, and quizzed them at length. Inspector Devinder Singh said, “We questioned them and their interrogation is being analyzed. We will apply for production warrants for obtaining their police custody.”

The three gangrape accused were also questioned in connection with the death of one woman called Rajni, who had jumped from a moving auto, near Hallomajra light point in March this year.

The police reconstructed the scene of crime and took the three accused to all the places, which were linked with the investigation of 22-year old Mohali woman’s gangrape. Inspector Nasib Singh, SHO of Sector 36 police station, said, “We reconstructed the scene of crime. The accused were taken to all the places, including Zirakpur, where they initially had consumed liquor, then to a Sector 37-based liquor vend, from where they had purchased another liquor bottle, then to the place from where the victim had boarded the auto, Sector 42 fuel station and Sector 53, where the victim was gangraped by them.”

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The three accused were in two-day police remand, which will end on Friday. The prosecution had moved an application in the court seeking permission to handcuff the accused while producing them in court. The application was allowed by the court on Wednesday. The application for handcuffing was moved after one of the accused, Irfan Mohammad, had attempted suicide in judicial custody. The three have been arrested by the UT Police for gangraping a 22-year-old girl in the forest area of Sector 53, Chandigarh, on November 17.

The woman, hailing from Dehradun, had taken an autorickshaw after attending her stenography class from Sector 37, when the incident happened. The autorickshaw driver allegedly drove her to an isolated place in Sector 53 here, instead of taking her to Mohali where she had been staying as a paying guest, and the trio then allegedly raped her.

The three accused will be produced in the court on Friday. The police took DNA samples of all of them.