Minor domestic help alleges gang rape by five in South Delhi

A 17-year-old girl was allegedly gang-raped by five men, who also allegedly chopped off her hair and attacked her with a knife for resisting the sexual assault, in south Delhi’s Sagarpur last week, police said.

Three of the suspects have been arrested while a hunt is on for the other two, said Devender Arya, deputy commissioner of police (south-west).

“A case of gang rape, assault using weapons, criminal intimidation, and under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act has been registered at Sagarpur police station,” the deputy commissioner of police said.

The survivor, in her statement to police, identified each of the five suspects by name, helping the police arrest three of them within a day of receiving the complaint.

All the five suspects in the case are adults, Arya said.

The girl told the police that she was sleeping in her home when around 2am on July 1, when her brother’s two friends knocked on her door and tricked her into accompanying them, saying her brother was in trouble.

The survivor lives with her mother, who works as a domestic help, and two brothers. On the day of the crime, one of her brothers was out of town.

The girl said she was taken to a flat in Sagarpur, where they revealed that they had tricked her. She told the police that there were three other men in the flat and together they forced her to drink before taking turns to raping and assaulting her.

She added that the next day, she was taken to a flat in outer Delhi’s Peeragarhi,where she was gang-raped again.

“When I resisted, they hurt me with a knife in my neck and arms and then chopped off my hair,” she told the police.

The survivor said she managed to escape in the early hours of July 3.

When the family approached the police to file a complaint, the girl’s mother alleged that the personnel of two police stations got into a dispute over jurisdiction before registering the complaint.

The girl’s family then took her to a hospital for treatment on July 4.

“When the hospital authorities alerted the police, a team showed up without a woman officer. The police then entered into a two-hour dispute over which police station the case was to be registered with,” said the woman at whose home the survivor’s mother works.

The police declined comment on the allegations of a jurisdiction dispute or the absence of a woman officer.

Last year, the Delhi Police had registered over 160 cases under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act and made 144 arrests.

First Published: Jul 09, 2019 03:33 IST