Ten days after a 19-year-old woman from Rewari district was gang-raped, the Haryana Police on Sunday arrested two key accused in the case, including an army man, who were on the run.
Director General of Police B S Sandhu said with the arrest of Manish and the army man, Pankaj, all the key accused allegedly involved in the incident, have now been arrested.
“Both the prime accused in the case who were on the run have been arrested,” Sandhu said.
On September 16, the Haryana Police had arrested the main accused, Nishu, besides two other accused in the case.
A court in Mahendergarh district had on Friday extended the remand of Nishu by four days while Sanjeev and Deendayal had been remanded to judicial custody.
Sanjeev was a medical practitioner who had attended to the woman first after the crime and Deendayal was the owner of the property where she was allegedly gang-raped, police had said.
The gang rape had prompted opposition parties to demand Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar’s resignation on moral grounds, alleging the state had failed to protect its daughters.
The Congress had demanded imposition of President’s Rule in the state, alleging the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government had utterly failed to tackle the law and order situation.
After the incident took place on September 12, the Haryana Police had set up a Special Investigation Team headed by Mewat SP Naazneen Bhasin and announced a reward of Rs 1 lakh for information leading to the arrest of the main accused in the case.
The accused live in the same village in Rewari and they knew the woman and her family, police said earlier.
The woman was abducted at a bus stop in Kanina town in neighbouring Mahendragarh district on September 12 while she was on the way to a coaching class, the police had earlier said.
She was allegedly drugged and gang-raped at a room housing a tubewell for irrigation.
Earlier, Haryana Police had formed multiple teams, which carried out raids at several neighbouring states.
The victim’s family members and a ‘Mahapanchayat’ or conglomeration of several villages in Rewari district, which was convened Friday, had demanded early arrest of the accused. This week, traders in Kosli town had observed a bandh to protest against the gang-rape.
The victim’s mother, while demanding capital punishment for the prime accused, had earlier told reporters that her daughter was in “acute trauma” after the incident.
Doctors who attended on the victim too had said she was in “severe trauma”, though her vital health parameters were said to be stable.
The police had drawn flak for allegedly not initiating prompt action after the complaint was registered.
After the shunting out of Rewari Superintendent of Police Rajesh Duggal, a woman assistant sub-inspector had later been suspended over alleged delay in taking action in the gang rape case.
The victim’s family had alleged that the police failed to take prompt action on their complaint and delayed action by citing jurisdictional issues between their units in Rewari and Mahendragarh districts.
The family had alleged that the Women’s Police Station in Rewari, after registering a “zero FIR” in the case, delayed action and failed to promptly hand over the probe to the Mahendragarh Police, under whose jurisdiction the incident took place.
A zero FIR can be filed at any police station and can later be transferred to the police station concerned.
