PANAJI:
Panaji police have booked a Panaji-based advocate for allegedly raping a
Russian woman at his office. In her complaint, the survivor stated the accused raped her on multiple occasions between January and February 2017.
The Russian woman had come to Goa in 2016 to help her friend with her case, which was pending before the Quepem court.
In exchange, the friend had promised to take care of her accommodation and food, but later refused .
In her complaint, the survivor said that she got stuck in India because the Quepem court issued her summons because of visa violation and asked her not to leave the state without court permission.
“I told my friend that I would not stand witness in her case since she had thrown me out of her house,” the survivor stated in her complaint, adding that it was then that her friend took her to meet the advocate.
“He told me that if I do not give witness, he will send me to jail in the visa violation case,” the survivor said.
Police said the accused promised to give the survivor accommodation if she agreed to continue as witness.
The day the accused called the survivor to his office to show her an accommodation is when he raped her for the first time, police said.
As per the complaint, four day’s later the accused sent her with his driver to Arambol to look at an accommodation, but as that was fully occupied, a few days later he showed her another place.
Police said that after she refused to stay at the second place, the accused brought her back to his office and raped her again.
“I have no support being a foreign national, which is why the delay in lodging the complaint,” she said.
The survivor added that the accused had threatened her saying that he has “direct contact with influential persons in Goa and single complaint from me will put me in trouble”.
Representative image
