A 21-year-old Kozhikode woman was allegedly gang raped by three men in a parked bus on July 5 (Monday). The woman, who is suffering from mental health issues, was allegedly gang raped by the men who had claimed to give her a lift back home. On Wednesday, July 7, the officials of Chevayur police station arrested two of the three men.
According to the police, the woman occasionally wanders from home to nearby places, and usually returns home soon. It was during one such incident on Monday that she was attacked by the men. “She had fought with her mother and left the house. After going a little away, standing on the road, she asked for a lift to vehicles passing by, wishing to go back home. The men who came on bikes, took her saying they would take her home,” an official of the Chevayur police station told TNM. The men however took her to a spot where a private bus was parked and assaulted her, the police said.
Following the assault, the accused men left the woman at an auto rickshaw stand in the region. Meanwhile, Asianet News reported that in an interview, the woman said that the men, after assaulting her, gave her Rs 300 while leaving her at an auto rickshaw stand, and allegedly asked her to come back the next day. It was when her mother saw the money and asked her about it, that she told her about the assault. On finding out about the incident, her mother informed her neighbours about the crime, police said. “It was the neighbours who then informed us about the crime,” police said.
Kunnamangalam natives 38-year-old Gobeesh and 32-year-old Muhammad Shameer have been arrested under sections 376 (2)(l) (rape of a woman suffering from mental or physical disability( and 376 (D) (gang rape) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). Search is on to find the third accused in the case.
Recently, Idukki police arrested a 22-year-old worker of the Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI) — the youth wing of the CPI(M) — for rape and murder of a six-year-old girl. It came as a shocker, as it surfaced that the youth had been sexually assaulting the girl since she was three years old. Read the story here.