BULANDSHAHR: Three accused has been arrested and 'three or four' are at large in the brutal gang rape incident of Uttar Pradesh's Bulandshahr. The incident took place on July 30 and police arrested three accused on July 31 and sent to judicial custody for 14 days. Case cracked. But police is still clueless how many accused are involved in the crime.
Senior Superintendent of Police Annes Ansari says, "It seems six or seven accused are involved. Investigation is underway in Bulandshahr incident."
Moreover, the police have not yet recovered weapons - gun, iron rod and sticks - used in the crime to beat the husband and of the woman and daughter, who were sexually assaulted by group of men.
Police neither have taken custody of the three arrested accused for further probe, nor have managed to locate the absconding accused, as per investigator, so far.
Strangely, all the three accused arrested by police hail from different places in Uttar Pradesh. Police arrested Raesuddin, Sahbaz and Zafar Singh. Strangely, Raesuddin hails from Sutari village in Bulandshahr, Sahbaz from Dehpa village in Hapur, and Zabar from Rabupura in Noida.
Police say they have identified two more accused as Parvez and Salim but are not aware from which village or place they belong.
The police failed to explain how six people from different places assembled at Bulandshahr to commit a gruesome crime. When asked how the case was cracked, the investigating officer said, "On next day of the incident, we called victims and their entire family members and showed them around 50 photographs of the various accused in the area. They identified two of them Salim and Zabar Singh. Then what we arrested Zabar and later two more."
The barbaric incident took place during night hours in an agricultural field and victims were traumatized when they were asked to identify the accused.
Ignoring these, the investigating officer said, "We have made recoveries. Gold chain from Zabar, Silver anklets from Sabhaz and Rs 5,500 from Raesuddin."
But strangely, a gold chain was lying on the crime spot for more than 24 hours. Police had picked up the gold chain from the crime spot. The investigating officer refuted this saying the gold chain picked up from spot was artificial chain.
Moreover, the victim had claimed that Rs 25,000 was looted from them.
The police have not yet taken statement of the victims before the magistrate under section 164 CrPC which is a crucial evidence in the investigation.
The police also failed register the case under sections of The Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO Act) 2012 as one of the victims was minor.
It was only after National Commission for Women slammed police for not including sections of POCSO Act 2012 in the FIR, the police on Monday added section 4 of POCSO Act.
The investigation into the case has raised serious suspicion that police acted 'in haste' with one of the accused Raesuddin brother's Aneez alleging that his brother was a home when the incident happened.
Over this, Senior Superintendent of Police said, "We are now looking into all the aspects. We ensure that only guilty people will be arrested and put behind bars."
Further, on the night of the incident, the Station House Officer Ram Sen Singh, who was later suspended, was around patrolling in the area where the incident took place. Moreover there were more than six other police officials on night patrol just few hundred meters away but they could not hear the screams of the victims.
He, however, under pressure suspended a trainee sub inspector, who was nowhere in the scene.
The probe into the incident -- where on the intervening night of last Friday and Saturday a woman and her 14-year-old daughter were dragged out of their car by dacoits near a highway when were travelling with other family members to their native place in Shahjahanpur to attend a family ritual and gang raped --- has so far highlighted the shoddy work of the Bulandshahr police.