Woman coming from Delhi to join bank in Kumbakonam ‘raped’

THANJAVUR : A 25-year-old woman from Rajasthan was sexually assaulted by four youth after midnight on Saturday in Kumbakonam, where she had just come from Chennai by a train to join a private bank. 
According to police, after getting down at the railway station, she hired an autorickshaw to go to a place she had chosen to stay but the driver took a circuitous route. As she questioned the driver and called her friend on her phone, the driver dropped her in the Chettimandapam area and sped away. 

While lugging her trolley bag, the woman, a Delhi resident, asked a biker for a lift and he obliged. However, the biker and another youth who was tailing them on a bike took the woman to a remote place near the Naachiaarkoil (temple) on the Kumbakonam bypass road and sexually assaulted her. Two more youth joined them in assaulting her. They threatened to kill her when she cried for help.

Later, one of the four accompanied the woman to the main road by foot and hailed an auto in which he travelled with her. Using the auto driver’s mobile phone, he called his friends, who came to the Old Fish Market and picked him. The auto driver later dropped the woman at her place. The woman, who noted the autorickshaw’s number, joined the bank later and told her colleagues about her ordeal. 

The Kumbakonam West police, zeroing in on the autorickshaw and using call details from the driver’s phone, identified S Dinesh (24), of Annai Anjugam Nagar; M Vasanth (21), of Motilal Street; S Purushothaman (19), of Moopanar Nagar and S Anbarasan (19), of Halima Nagar as the assailants and arrested them on Wednesday. They were charged under Indian Penal Code sections 366 (kidnapping), 354 (molestation), 376 (rape) and 506 (ii) (criminal intimidation). The woman got her statement recorded by the judicial magistrate and she was sent for medical examination.