17-year-old out with friend raped near Surat; 2 arrested

SURAT: Less than a week after the g ang rape of a minor girl in Vadodara, three men allegedly raped a 17-year-old girl in a sugarcane field after thrashing her male friend near Mota Borsara village, about 35 km from Surat city, late on Tuesday night.
Police arrested two of the three accused, and the hunt is on to nab the third who has been identified.The duo have a criminal history, with one of them even facing murder charges.
Around 10:45pm, three people on a bike saw the girl and her friend standing near the field. They stopped and star ted intimidating the two, asking why they were standing there at night. The trio then started beating them and snatched the girl’s chain. The assailants then took away the mobile phones of the duo and forced the girl’s friend to undress. They threatened to make the photos viral and demanded that the girl get physical with them.
The girl then fled into the adjoining field, but one of the accused chased her with a stick. Her friend escaped from there out of fear after two others tried to thrash him with sticks. The three people then took turns to rape the girl in the field, said police.
When her friend returned with some villagers of Mota Borsara, they saw the girl lying there traumatised and alerted the police.
Twenty teams comprising 200 policemen from the Surat rural police, city crime branch, special operations group, and
local crime branch launched a massive manhunt to trace the accused. They recovered a motorcycle near the crime scene, which helped establish the identity of two accused persons.
Using human intelligence and technical surveillance, the cops traced their location near Mandvi, some 45km from Surat. When the cops zeroed in on them, the two tried to flee from the thick bushes, forcing police to fire one round into the air. Those arrested have been identified as Munna Paswan, a native of Siwan district of Bihar and living in Kim, and Shivshankar alias Dayashankar Chorasiya, who is from Guna district of Madhya Pradesh and lived near Hariyal Saheli Industries.
The investigation revealed that the two persons ar rested have criminal backgrounds, with Chorasiya even facing murder charg es in A nkleshwar town. He was also booked under the Arms Act at Amirg adh police station in Banaskantha.
Paswan also has several offences of house break-ins and thefts lodged against him in Kosamba and Kadodara police stations in Surat, Panoli and Varnama police stations in Bharuch, and one in Varnama police station of Vadodara.
The girl’s male friend lodged the complaint with the Kosamba police station.
(The victim's identity has not been revealed to protect her privacy as per Supreme Court directives on cases related to sexual assault)