Five booked in gang rape and assault case

Five people were booked in connection with the alleged gang rape and assault of a 23-year-old woman from Hardoi, said police. They said the main accused, Mohammad

Five people were booked in connection with the alleged gang rape and assault of a 23-year-old woman from Hardoi, said police. They said the main accused, Mohammad Sameer, was a resident of Jankipuram, Lucknow, where the crime was allegedly committed.

HT Image

“On the complaint of the victim’s father, we lodged a rape and assault case on Saturday. We will arrest the accused soon,” said inspector Shailendra Srivastava of the Hardoi city police station.

He said the woman went missing last week and her father said that he came to know about her location (Jankipuram) only on November 17. “Her father alleged that she was forcefully kept by Mohammad Sameer at his house in Jankipuram. He also claimed that the accused’s parents and others names in the FIR were complicit in the matter,” said Srivastava.

In his complaint, the woman’s father said that she had gone to the market but did not return. He said he initially asked neighbours and relatives about her whereabouts before coming to know that she was in Lucknow. He and his relatives reportedly took her back to Hardoi after her captors released her.

“The woman told her father that Sameer kidnapped her and brought her to Lucknow where he forcefully married her. She alleged that she was gang raped and assaulted,” said the inspector.

The others accused in the case are Safir (Sameer’s father), Salman Ansari, Atul Kumar Ray and Khurshid Jahan (Sameer’s mother), he said.

The inspector said that the woman’s medical examination was done on November 22 and the report was awaited.

Another official privy to the matter said that the police were “probing the charges carefully”. “It has been claimed that the woman knew the accused before the incident,” he said.