Dombivli rape case: 3 more arrests take tally to 27

The Manpada police on Friday arrested three more people in connection with the gang rape of a 15-year-old girl from Maharashtra’s Dombivli, taking the total arrests in the case to 27, while two minors have also been detained. The survivor has named 33 men as accused in the case, said police.

The Manpada police on Friday arrested three more people in connection with the gang rape of a 15-year-old girl from Maharashtra’s Dombivli, taking the total arrests in the case to 27, while two minors have also been detained. The survivor has named 33 men as accused in the case, said police.

The Dombivli rape survivor has named 33 men as accused in the case, said police.

According to the complaint filed by the survivor on Wednesday, she was raped multiple times at different places across the Thane district between January 29 and September 22 this year. The survivor has alleged that the man she was in a relationship with threatened to leak their private videos and forced her to have physical relations with some of his friends and acquaintances.

“We have arrested three more accused in the case on Friday. The total number of accused has also increased from 32 to 33. The remaining accused will be arrested soon,” Deputy Commissioner of Police Sachin Gunjal, Zone III, Thane Police said.

Based on the girl’s complaint, the Manpada police in Dombivli on Wednesday registered a case against 33 persons under IPC sections 376 (rape), 376 (n) (repeated rape), 376 (d) (gang-rape), 376 (3) (rape on a woman under sixteen years of age) and provisions of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act.

Gunjal added that the investigations are still underway at all the locations where the offence is alleged to have been committed. “Some of these locations are houses where one or more of the accused stay on rent, while in other cases, the victim was called to deserted locations like construction sites. Our teams are visiting all these locations,” he said.

The police, however, have not found any compromising videos of the victim in the cell phones of any of the accused arrested so far. “We are submitting all the cell phones for forensic analysis to find out if the accused have deleted the videos, and whether a digital trail of the same can be obtained. We are also seeking details of whether the videos were forwarded to anyone other than those named in the FIR, or whether the videos were uploaded on any pornographic websites,” Gunjal said.