PATNA: Six Railway Protection Force (RPF) personnel were placed under suspension in Bihar’s Chhapra on Friday for allegedly gang-raping a 17-year-old married woman at an RPF outpost at Chapra Junction railway station.
RPF outpost in-charge Shahnawaz Hussain and five constables, including two women, were placed under suspension after a probe found that they had not acted sensitively and in accordance with the law after the woman was taken into custody. Varanasi railway division RPF commandant Rishi Pandey, who reached Chhapra and probed the allegations, ordered the suspensions, said sources.
The woman, a resident of Siwan district, was found by some RPF constables at Chhapra Junction railway station at about 7 PM on October 29. She was unaccompanied, appeared frightened and told the constables that she wanted to board a train to New Delhi to meet her brother, said sources.
“She was first taken to the office of Child Line at the railway station, but the in-charge there refused to help her saying there was no woman staffer at the time. Then the constables took her to the office room of the deputy inspector of RPF, where she was kept through the night and raped several times,” said a police official familiar with the ongoing probe.
The accused constables had allegedly made an entry in the station diary saying the woman was given in the custody of female RPF constable Reshmi Kachhap. “They wrote that the woman was placed for the night at the residence of Kachhap,” said a source.
Saran district SP Harikishore Rai said an FIR has been lodged on the basis of the victim’s statement and a medical examination was conducted on her. “Suitable action would be taken on the basis of the medical report and the findings of the probe,” he told journalists after a meeting with the RPF commandant.
The victim was married off by her parents on March 3 and she was driven out of the home by her in-laws because of her sickness, said an official of a shelter home in Chhapra where she has been lodged.