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3 accused of stalking DU students in SUV also from same varsity, manhunt on: Cops
The victims reported verbal abuse and an attempted kidnapping amidst jurisdictional complications in reporting.
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Days after two Delhi University (DU) students were allegedly stalked and sexually harassed by a group of men in an SUV near a Delhi park, police said on Friday that at least three suspects were also from the same varsity and efforts are underway to apprehend them.
The purported incident took place near Hakikat Park in north Delhi’s Mukherjee Nagar area on Wednesday night.
“One of them, identified as Naman, is a student of DU’s Faculty of Law and a resident of northeast Delhi’s Karawal Nagar. He was driving the white Tata Safari SUV at the time of the alleged incident. We learnt that two more DU students were also inside the vehicle. They have been identified. Their interrogation will help us ascertain if there were more students involved,” deputy commissioner of police (northwest) Akanksha Yadav said.
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Deep Dive
The incident came days after a 17-year-old girl was allegedly gang-raped at gunpoint by three men inside Aastha Kunj Park in south Delhi.
According to the police, the women alleged that the accused verbally abused them and passed indecent remarks before fleeing the area.
A First Information Report (FIR) was registered at Mukherjee Nagar police station under sections 78 (stalking), 79 (word, gesture or act intended to insult the modesty of a woman) and 3(5) (common intention) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita.
A video clip of one of the women, narrating her ordeal, also surfaced on social media.
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In the purported clip, the student alleged that she and her friend were returning from Vijay Nagar when an SUV arrived, its occupant rolled down the windows and made remarks, and when the women asked them to stop misbehaving and leave, the occupants hurled more abuses and indecent remarks and started following them.
“...when we tried to record a video, the car stopped and the occupants tried to drag us inside. But when my friend took out her phone, they fled. We first went to Maurice Nagar police station, where the police personnel told us the place where the incident occurred did not come under their jurisdiction and referred us to another police station. We visited three stations…but no FIR was registered. From our sources, we identified one of the occupants. He had threatened us by claiming to be a relative of a Station House Officer (SHO),” the woman said.
HT could not independently verify the authenticity of the clip.
Yadav said an inquiry has been launched: “We have identified the four accused. The SUV bearing Delhi number was also traced. We have registered a case, and teams are conducting raids to arrest them. A probe is underway,” the DCP said.
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Police said the alleged incident took place around 9.30 pm. “The men allegedly verbally abused the women and made indecent remarks. They even followed them and misbehaved before leaving the area,” the officer said.
