Police squabble over jurisdiction in rape case

After drawing flak for not having registered a widow's case where she had alleged rape by her relatives, the Ludhiana police registered a case against the accused late on Tuesday.

After drawing flak for not having registered a widow's case where she had alleged rape by her relatives, the Ludhiana police registered a case against the accused late on Tuesday.

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The woman had come to the pension office, Ludhiana, to resolve some issues related to her husband's pension on Monday. According to the victim, she went to the Bharat Nagar chowk to take a bus to Sangrur, where she belonged to.

While she was waiting for the bus, three distant relatives of her's, Rajinder Pyara, Kamal Sharma and an unidentified man, offered to give her a lift. She was offered a drink laced with sedatives that made her unconscious.

Taking advantage, the three allegedly raped her turn by turn and threw her in a vacant plot on the Tajpur road, near the Ludhiana central jail, and fled.

The place from where she was abducted comes under the jurisdiction of division number-5 police station. The police did not register a case at the police station owing to jurisdictional confusion. Reportedly, the case shuttled between police divisions 5 and 7. The division number-5 police finally registered a case only late in the evening on March 12.

The victim's husband was a guard at Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) after getting retired from the army. He had died two years ago.