Woman gangraped in Chandigarh: Was dragged into bushes on getting down to pay, says victim
21-year-old tells police how auto driver tricked her by claiming vehicle had broken down; then trio took turns to rape her, while threatening to kill her
The 21-year-old Dehradun woman who was gangraped in a secluded spot in Sector 53 on Friday night was tricked into believing that the auto-rickshaw she boarded from Sector 37 had developed a snag.
“I had got down to pay the fare as the driver told me that the three-wheeler had broken down on the service lane along the highway in Sector 53 when another accused who was also in the auto dragged me into the bushes,” the victim told the police while recounting her tale of horror.
The woman, who recently moved here and was staying as a paying guest in Phase 3B1, Mohali, said she could recognise all the three accused — the auto driver and other two occupants of the vehicle — who took turns to rape her.
The victim told the police that after attending a stenography class in Sector 37, she had walked to the Sector 36/37 light point around 7:30pm. She was talking on her phone when she saw an auto and waved it to stop. She asked the driver if he could drop her in Mohali, to which he readily agree.
Little suspecting any foul play, she sat in the three-wheeler that was already occupied by two other men.
Around 7.55pm, the driver claimed that the vehicle had run out of fuel after it stopped a few metres from the Sector-42 filling station. CCTV footage at the pump shows the two passengers pushing the auto while the woman keeps sitting inside.
After refuelling the vehicle, the driver took a U-turn at the Sector 42/43 roundabout, and it was here on the service lane in Sector 53 along the National Highway-21 that the auto allegedly broke down.
As the victim got down and was taking out money to pay the fare, she was dragged to a low-lying area along the service lane, gangraped and dumped in the wild growth.
“They had threatened to kill me with a knife if I raised the alarm,” she told the police.
Around 9pm, the police control room got a call from a motorcyclist who spotted the victim sobbing on the roadside.
The girl was admitted to Government Multi Specialty Hospital (GMSH), Sector 16, where doctors confirmed she was gangraped. Although otherwise her condition was stated to be stable, doctors who examined the woman on Saturday said she is still in trauma.
Meanwhile, the victim’s mobile phone is still missing, and sources said they suspect it is with the accused. The victim told the police that she was sharing her location with someone on getting off the three-wheeler when the phone slipped from her hand in the milieu. The phone is switched off since then.