We were tortured with electric shocks for a confession, say youths ‘wrongly held’ for rape and murders

MEWAT: The four youths, who had been picked up by the Haryana Police in connection with the Dingerheri gang rapes and murders in 2016, returned home to Mewat’s Mohammadpur Ahir village on Friday after the Punjab and Haryana high court granted them interim bail on Wednesday.
But the memories of the 19 months that the four spent in jail still haunt Sandeep, Amarjeet, Karamjeet and Rahul. They still shiver when they recount the “physical and mental torture” they faced in police custody. “After the arrest, we were kept separately, beaten up and tortured. Electric current was passed through our body, we were waterboarded,” alleged Amarjeet.

“Though physical torture ended after we were moved to Bhondsi jail, other inmates would intimidate us there,” he added. Karamjeet said, “I still have the marks of police torture on my thighs. They beat us to make us confess to the crime we did not commit.”

“When we did not give our confessions, they made us sign on blank pieces of paper and wrote our statements,” alleged Amarjeet. “Had the Gurugram cops not arrested the members of the Axle gang, we would have probably been dead by now.”

Rahul, who is originally from Bihar, still seems to be in a state of shock. “I don’t know what I can do now. I will stay in this village till the case gets over, but would want to find some work after that,” he said, sitting alongside his ageing father.

Sandeep’s father was killed in a shootout two months after he was arrested . Two men had taken him on a bike and hours later he was found dead. “It was clearly a revenge killing,” he said. Two people are in custody for the same.

The four youths were arrested after a 40-year-old farmer and his wife were beaten to death and their two nieces were raped by a gang of four armed men, who barged into their home in Dingerheri village of Nuh district in Mewat off the KMP Expressway on the intervening night of August 24 and 25 in 2016. A special investigation team (SIT) led by the then IG (Rewari) arrested the four accused within four days of the crime. Finally, the CBI took over the probe on December 5, 2016, following resentment among villagers who accused the cops of a botched-up investigation.

The four said the rape survivors knew them personally. They had neither identified them nor named them during the first parade. But in the second identification parade, the women (rape survivors) finally took their names. “We suspect they (women) were lured with compensation to identify us,” said Sandeep.

The case against them fell flat after four others — Hemant Chauhan, Ayan Chauhan, Vinay alias Lambu and Jai Bhagwan of ‘Axle gang’— were arrested by the Gurugram police on September 13, 2017. These four youths, who were arrested for their alleged role in the gang rape of two women in Madpura, Pataudi, confessed to their involvement in Dingerheri gang rapes and murders during the investigation.

Justice Surinder Gupta granted them bail on Wednesday while hearing a petition filed by the four after the CBI submitted a chargesheet against four members of “Axle gang” in the case. This is the second case in which Haryana Police is facing flak for a botched-up investigation in the recent past. Police had arrested a Gurugram private school’s bus conductor for allegedly murdering a Class II student last September, but he was acquitted by a city court after the CBI found no incriminating evidence against him.

“We knew they had not done anything. Had they done it, they would not been hanging around in the village after the incident,” said Subedar Vidhyanand, who lives on the outskirts of Ahir village. “They are all unmarried and now unemployed. Who will give them jobs and who will marry them now?” asked Mukesh Yadav, the sarpanch of the village.

“We want action against the police, especially IG (Rewari) Mamta Singh, who was heading the SIT,” said Sandeep.