Two of the women who were at the mercy of the gang of nine men, Manu and Geetha, narrated their horrifying experience to Express, which seemed to differ from the police version.
Thursday was just another day in the lives of the eight bar girls who were discussing work when a knock on the door changed the lively mood to one of pure terror.
“Around 1:30 am the door bell rang and we thought that our colleague must be playing a prank. When we opened the door, nine men holding a machete and a pistol barged in. They beat up one of our guards and demanded we give all our money and jewellery. They must have been 21 to 30 years of age. They kept on hitting us,” says Manu (name changed).
The men also threatened to kill the girls if they would not vacate the house. Manu says that they have lost stuff worth over Rs 4 lakh. “Then they took three of us into a room one after the other and tried to misbehave. But when we did not yield, they stopped. And then they dragged five of us by our hair and said that we will be put in a brothel. They asked us to pack clothes and dragged us to a car. We did not know which way we went after that,” narrates Manu.
The girls were taken to a house that the gang leader said belonged to his sister.
“We were given food and water but we just wanted to get out of there alive,” she says.
One of the men tried to force himself upon one of the girls, in front of the sister, but she resisted him.
“Around 3 am, they drove us through two or three streets and pushed us out into the road, near a bridge. Since we are new to the city we did not know how far we were from home. We took an auto home around 5 am and called the police. They took only the three of us for medical tests, to make sure that nothing had gone wrong,” she says.
Glad to be alive, the girls hope things will be back to normal