Gaya: Several RJD leaders, including its national general secretary Alok Kumar Mehta and MLA Surendra Yadav, were booked on Saturday for forcing a 15-year-old rape survivor in Bihar’s Gaya to narrate her ordeal after they dragged her out of a police vehicle.
The RJD leaders were part of a fact-finding team who confronted the police team that was taking the girl to a hospital for medical examination on Friday. The politicians were seen clicking photographs and making videos of the girl on their cell phones.
Besides making the identity of the minor rape survivor public, the RJD leaders also allegedly forced her to narrate her ordeal, said Magadh Range Deputy Inspector General (DIG) Vinay Kumar.
The fact-finding team was constituted by Leader of the Opposition Tejashwi Yadav.
A group of armed youths tied the girl’s father to a tree and raped her mother and her in Gaya on June 14.
The family was waylaid when they were crossing the area on a motorcycle near Sondiha village under Konch police station on June 14 night, following which the station house officer was suspended and 20 youths were detained, they said.
An FIR was lodged against RJD's national general secretary Mehta, Belaganj MLA from Belaganj in Gaya district Surendra Prasad Yadav, the party's state president of women's cell Abhalata, RJD's district president Murshid Alam alias Nezam, district president of RJD's women's cell Sarswati Devi and other unnamed persons in the case, the DIG said.
The case was lodged with medical police station under relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code and the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, 2012, he said.
He said they were also been booked for creating obstruction in discharge of duty by the police officials in the case.
Mehta, a former Bihar minister, however, termed the allegations against him and the team as "false" and claimed they were intended to divert people's attention from the case.
"This is an attempt to divert people's attention from the case in order to protect the accused by the state government...Whatever allegations have been levelled against me are completely wrong and false," he told PTI.
Accusing the police of having delayed action in an attempt to cover up the case, Mehta asked, "Why the police took the victim after 38 hours of the incident for medical examination instead of getting it done within 24 hours?"
The party's team did not ask the victim to get down from the vehicle, he said, claiming it requested the girl for some information but she became angry after seeing mediapersons.
DIG Kumar said that the state women commission has sought a report from the police in this regard.
A team form the Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL), Patna had yesterday visited the site of occurrence to collect samples and evidence in the gang rape case, he said.
The FSL team also collected the clothes of both the victims and the arrested suspects for scientific investigation in the case, Kumar said.
Three persons have been arrested in the case, the DIG said, adding that two of them- Shivam Sharma and Gaurav Sharma- belonged to Sonediha village while the third Dipak Paswan hailed from Manglore, a neighbouring village.
The police have set up three separate teams to investigate the case, Kumar said, noting that a charge sheet would be filed soon in a court.
Besides, the police would make a formal plea to the court for a speedy trial in the case, the DIG said.
(With PTI inputs)
Comments
0 comment