ELECTION 99
US EDITION
COLUMNISTS
DIARY
SPECIALS
INTERVIEWS
CAPITAL BUZZ
REDIFF POLL
DEAR REDIFF
THE STATES
YEH HAI INDIA!
ELECTIONS
ARCHIVES

Search Rediff

Three aged Pune doctors arrested in patient's rape

Michael Gonsalves in Pune

In an incident that has sent shockwaves through conservative Pune, the cultural capital of Maharashtra, three elderly doctors, including a retired government servant, were arrested by the Kothrud police on charges of blackmailing and raping a married woman over a period of one year.

Significantly, police said one of the doctors was also involved in running a brothel in the downtown Sadashiv Peth area.

While Dr Madhukar Wabhle, 74, and Dr Madhav Chintaman Raste, 64, both residents of Karvenagar, were arrested on Saturday, Dr Vinayak Lele, 62, a resident of Sadashiv Peth was taken into custody today. All three have been charged under sections 376(2) and 506(1) of the Indian Penal Code.

With the doctors hailing from reputed families and having good reputations in Pune's intellectual circles, the incident has the entire police department astir. Police Inspector P Gaikwad, the officer in charge of Kothrud police station, consulted his superiors, including Deputy Commissioner of Police Ajit Patil and Police Commissioner K K Kashyap, before registering the complaint. The first information report was registered under the supervision of the top brass.

Wabhle, a retired government doctor, and Raste managed to get nude photographs of the 49-year-old married woman and then blackmailed her, police said.

According to the complaint lodged by the victim, wife of a retired government officer, she had gone to Raste for some consultation in August 1998 when she was suffering from acute pain in the abdomen. Raste referred her to his friend Wabhle. And that was when her ordeal began.

The complainant said Wabhle took her to his consulting chamber at his house in Madhuban Colony and gave her some "red-coloured medicine" to drink. Soon the woman lapsed into unconsciousness.

Wabhle then stripped her, photographed her, and raped her in her unconscious state, she said in her complaint. Raste had accompanied the woman to his house and was present when the incident took place, she added.

Raste and Lele then allegedly connived with Wabhle and forced the woman to have sexual intercourse with them on several occasions. The woman said all three used to force her to visit their houses and submit to their lust on pain of having her photographs shown to her family.

She said she was also taken to the posh Hotel Saras in the Swar Gate area a few times where too the trio took turns to rape her.

The victim said she finally broke her silence and lodged the complaint when the trio began demanding to have her college-going daughter.

Tell us what you think of this report