Pune: Two army jawans held for raping woman in hospital

PUNE: Two army jawans currently posted in Delhi were arrested on Wednesday for allegedly raping a speech and hearing impaired woman (30) over a span of four years at the Military Hospital in Khadki.

The jawans, Ravindra Singh and Mangilal Ahirwar, were taken into custody by the Military Hospital authorities in Delhi. They were brought to the city on Wednesday. Later in the evening, they were handed over to the Khadki police.

The jawans were arrest under the sections 376 (rape) and 354 (molestation) of the IPC. Besides, the station headquarters, Kirkee, has initiated a court of inquiry against them.

Sub-inspector Jyoti Kadu of the Khadki police, who is investigating the rape case, said, “Singh and Ahirwar were produced before a court in Pune on Thursday. Ahirwar was released on bail, while Singh was remanded in police custody till Friday.”

Singh was posted as a nursing assistant in Military Hospital, Khadki. Ahirwar was a grade IV employee, Kadu said.

The sub-inspector said the other two jawans booked in the case had secured interim anticipatory bail from Bombay high court till December 18.

The Khadki police on October 16 had booked the four army jawans for repeatedly raping the woman — a grade IV employee — at the Military Hospital in Khadki. According to the FIR, the woman in July approached an Indore-based NGO working for the welfare of speech and hearing impaired people. The NGO took her statement through sign-language expert Gyanendra Purohit.

Purohit came to Pune with the woman and submitted a complaint to the hospital’s commandant. She also approached senior officers of the Indore police, who requested their Pune counterparts to register her offence.

The woman claimed in her FIR that she started working in the hospital in July 2014. She claimed that she was first raped by one of the jawans during her night shift in the bathroom of a family ward.

She claimed that she had reported the rape to her immediate superior, a nursing assistant, through a text message. He promised to look into the complaint and called the jawan, who had allegedly raped her. But they joined hands and demanded sexual favours from her, threatening to make her text message go viral. The duo was joined by other two jawans and she was repeatedly raped over four years, she alleged.

The police said the jawans made a video clip of the woman and blackmailed her. The police said her complaints to different administrative heads in the hospital went unheard.