Bhumata Brigade activists beat up alleged rapist

The Bhumata Brigade took the law into its own hands on Wednesday and beat up an engineer who had allegedly raped a colleague and refused to marry her in Shikrapur town of Pune’s Shirur tehsil. The engineer, Srikant Ambadas Londhe, has been arrested.

Assistant police inspector (API) Hemchandra Khopade said that they had arrested the engineer under various sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and would produce him in court on Thursday.

Bhumata Brigade chief Trupti Desai said that the engineer and the survivor were working in the same company when they fell in love. Londhe promised to marry her and raped her regularly. She then became pregnant, but he made her abort the foetus. When she went to lodge a police complaint, the cops called both the parties and insisted on an amicable settlement.

“The police asked Londhe to marry the girl and told the girl to file a case if she wanted to do so. But no case was filed,” Desai said. She added that the survivor was reluctant to file a case because she hoped to marry the accused and have him recognise her as his wife. “After aborting the foetus, Londhe refused to marry the girl and offered her Rs 3 lakh as a one-time settlement amount. The survivor refused to accept the amount and appealed to the Bhumata Brigade for a resolution,” she said.

Justifying the action of taking the law into her own hands, Desai said, “The situation was serious and needed drastic action. We approached Londhe and urged him to marry the survivor, but he refused. The survivor had been exploited and that injustice could not be undone with money. This was too much, and we beat him up with slippers and shoes. We also demanded that the police arrest him for rape and infanticide. He has been arrested under IPC sections 376 and 313,” Desai said.

Londhe is from Shrigonda town of Ahmednagar, while the survivor is from Shikrapur and works in a private company.