Three more accused have been arrested in connection with the alleged gang rape of a 19-year-old woman in Varanasi, a police official said on Friday.
With these arrests, the police have captured 12 out of 23 accused in the case.
The news of this development came barely hours after Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived here in the morning to inaugurate and lay the foundation stone for several projects in his parliamentary constituency.
The PM received a detailed briefing about the case and asked officials to take the strictest possible action against those involved, according to an official statement.
Meanwhile, Additional Commissioner of Police (Cantonment) Vidush Saxena said that the police arrested the three on Thursday and are continuously conducting raids to arrest the remaining accused.
The ones who have been arrested have been identified as Raj Vishwakarma, Sameer, Ayush, Sohail, Danish, Anmol, Sajid, Zahir, Imran, Jaib, Aman and Raj Khan.
According to the complaint, the victim was gang-raped by 23 people across multiple places between March 29 and April 4. The survivor's family filed the complaint in this regard on April 6.
A case was registered under sections 70(1) (gang rape), 74 (assault or use of criminal force to woman with intent to outrage her modesty), 123 (causing hurt by means of poison, etc., with intent to commit an offence), 126(2) (wrongful restraint), 127(2) (wrongful confinement) and 351(2) (criminal intimidation) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), the police had earlier said.
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