Surat: Three migrants arrested for gang rape of MP woman

SURAT: The city crime branch sleuths on Friday arrested three of the four migrants who had allegedly gang-raped a 27-year-old woman in a banana farm on Devadh-Kumbhariya Road on the night of September 11.
The accused, who were arrested from the Rajivnagar slums near Bombay Cloth Market, work as labourers lugging vegetable bags in Sardar Market. Police had prepared sketches of the accused based on the description given by the woman and her boyfriend and circulated them.
Meanwhile, investigators got information through their human sources that one man resembling the person in the sketch was living in Rajivnagar. “We were keeping a watch in the area when we were informed about this person. He was picked up for questioning but did not reveal much. We found his photograph in the mobile and showed it to the woman’s boyfriend who immediately identified him,” said a crime branch official.
Later, he revealed the names of two others who were also nabbed from the same area.
Those arrested were identified as Videshi alias Vikas alias Takla Yadav (22), Jitendra alias Phulchand Yadav (21) and Gopal Sukhdev Manna (25). Vikas and Jitendra are natives of Bihar while Gopal is from West Bengal.
All three work in Sardar Market as labourers lugging vegetable bags. Their accomplice Dipak Yadav is on the run.
On the night of September 11, the four had gone for a stroll on the Devadh-Kumbhariya Road when they spotted the woman and her boyfriend sitting at an isolated spot.
Vikas and Dipak decided to take advantage of the situation. They approached the couple and Dipak grabbed her boyfriend by the neck using his towel. Vikas then bludgeoned his head with a wooden stick and both tied his hands.
“Vikas then dragged the girl into the banana farm and raped her. Later, the others also took turns to rape the woman,” said the police official. The accused looted the couple’s mobile phones and fled from the spot.
The traumatized rape survivor, who is a native of Madhya Pradesh and had been working in a zari unit for the last four months, did not reveal the full details to her family.
The accused were handed over to Puna police station for further investigation.
Police sources said that the woman initially claimed that she was kidnapped from the Limbayat area. She had not told the police about her boyfriend then.
“Probably, she did not want her family to know about her affair,” said the police.
The survivor lives with her sister and sends money to her mother in MP as she was the only earning member. Her father had died 15 years ago.
(The victim's identity has not been revealed to protect her privacy as per Supreme court directives on cases related to sexual assault)