NEW DELHI: Five men from Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh were arrested for allegedly harassing a Darjeeling woman and her friends in southwest Delhi’s Hauz Khas Village area. The incident had taken place on the intervening night July 18 and 19 when the women were waiting for a cab outside a bar.
A video of the incident went viral after one of the women had uploaded it on social media following which the Delhi Commission of Women (DCW) had taken took suo motu cognisance of the case.
The accused were identified as Dinesh Ram (34), a resident of Jhansi in UP; Ashish Shivhare (39), Vikas Shivhare (38), Naveen Shivhare (41) and Ankit Shivhare (29), all residents of Chattarpur in Madhya Pradesh, they said.
Interrogation revealed that the men reached to Hauz Khas village before boarding a train for Madhya Pradesh from Delhi on July 19. The group had made lewd comments about the women after which a complaint was lodged under section 509 of the IPC (insulting the modesty of a woman) on July 21 at Safdarjung Enclave police station.
One of the men asked the Darjeeling woman about her “rate (hourly charge as a sex worker)”. In the video, a man in a t-shirt is heard saying Sorry to the women as he walks away. “Sorry bolne se ab kya hoga (what is the point of saying sorry now),” one of the women can be heard saying. The video had gone viral on various portal sites, drawing flak from people from across the country.