A 23-year-old woman, daughter of a serving Provincial Civil Service (PCS) officer, was allegedly gang-raped by thee men in a moving vehicle on December 5 in Uttar Pradesh's Lucknow. According to a PTI report, the harrowing ordeal only came to light on December 10 when the survivor filed a report with the Wazirganj police station, unveiling the traumatic sequence of events.
In a police complaint, she stated she visited the King George's Medical University (KGMU) Hospital's Psychiatry Department on December 5, where she had been undergoing treatment for some time. She sought the help of a tea vendor, Satyam Mishra, whose stall she used to often visit, to charge her mobile phone.
Mishra offered to charge her phone in a parked ambulance, but the driver unexpectedly left with a patient. Satyam and the survivor chased the ambulance and caught up to it near the IT College crossing.
What began as an act of kindness swiftly transformed into a nightmarish assault as Mishra, accompanied by two others identified as Aslam and Suhail, allegedly coerced the survivor into an SUV and transported her to a dhaba in the Safedabad area of Barabanki.
The men forced her to drink something which was laced with an intoxicant.
"As the car sped along, Satyam filmed his associates sexually assaulting her one by one. In a desperate plea, she begged Satyam to delete the video and drop her at her friend's house in Indira Nagar. Instead, they abandoned her at Munshipulia, leaving her traumatised and physically injured, and fled the scene," the Chiranjeev Nath Sinha, Additional DCP (West Zone) said, according to IANS.
During the investigation, they carried out a verification drive of 120 kiosks/stalls and took their photos and showed them to the survivor. They finally nabbed Mishra and the other two men, Suhail and Aslam.
"Then we picked up Satyam who worked at the tea stall owned by Suhail and Aslam, whose vehicle was used in the crime. The surveillance details and CCTV footage nailed their role in the crime," the officer said.
Based on her account, an FIR was registered at Wazirganj police station on Sunday under sections 376 (d) (gang rape), 342 (wrongful confinement), 328 (administering drug with intent to cause hurt), 323 (voluntarily causing hurt) and 506 (criminal intimidation) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) against the three accused, police said.