A 22-year-old mentally unstable girl was allegedly gang-raped by five men in her vicinity in Vartak Nagar, Thane, on Sunday night.
The girl lives with her mother and two younger sisters. The girl’s aunt and elder sister who got married live about 10 minutes away. The victim’s mother had told her to go to her aunt’s place to get the tiffin. Police officials said the girl left home around 7.30 pm and returned home the next morning at 5am.
A police official said, “The girl had been told to go to her aunt’s place but she went to some other house nearby. The accused (43) was alone in that house. After the girl entered, he closed the door and raped her. At around 9:30pm, he left the girl, threatening her not to tell anyone. Unable to understand what had happened to her, the girl sat crying near a bus stop when a rickshaw driver approached her. On the pretext of dropping her home, he took her to a nearby shabby area and called three more friends. They brought one truck and all of them sexually assaulted her till 5 am the next day. The rickshaw driver later dropped the girl home and told her to meet him there whenever he called.”
Meanwhile, the girl’s mother registered a missing complaint at Vartak Nagar police station at around 12 am. “When the girl came back, she asked her where she had gone and realised that she was bleeding. She immediately took her to the police station and lodged the complaint against the culprit. The police checked CCTV footage and the phone number that the rickshaw driver had given the girl and arrested all the five accused in the case. The accused have been remanded to police custody till January 16,” said Thane police PRO Gajanan Kabdule.
