LUCKNOW: With the arrest of three more persons, the total number of accused held in case of the alleged gang rape of a 19-year-old girl by 23 persons in seven days, went up to nine on Tuesday.
Moreover, the cops are also probing the role of the nine persons arrested so far, as they had hit the headlines on charges of operating a sex racket in the name of a spa centre in 2022.
A 19-year-old student of graduation had lodged an FIR with Varanasi police on Monday claiming that she was raped by 23 people who shot her videos since March 29-April 4 in Varanasi.
In her written complaint, the victim had named 12 of the accused while the remaining 11 perpetrators were unknown to her.
According to Additional Commissioner of Police, Varanasi Cantt, Vidush Saxena, total nine individuals, including Raj Vishwakarma, 20, Ayush Dhoosia, 19, Sajid, 19, Suhail Sheikh,20, Danish Ali, 20, Imran Ahmed, 19, Shabbir Alam alias Sameer Ahmed, 21, Sohail Khan, 20, and Anmol Gupta, 28, were arrested in connection with case so far. They were all produced in the court and sent to jail, he added.
Earlier, a high-voltage drama was witnessed at Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyay district hospital when some locals tried to assault one of the accused upon becoming aware of their arrival. As a result, the cops enhanced security, especially, when the accused were being boarded into a van following a medical test.
The police authorities claimed that the search for other accused, including three identified and 11 unidentified ones, was on.
Those arrested so far include businessmen, workers at shops or hotels, and some students. One of them operates a hookah bar in Sigra locality and is considered to be the kingpin of the sex racket. He was previously charged with running a sex racket in 2022. Further investigation into his role is on, said officials.
As per the police sources, the probe teams raided around 33 locations since Monday and had been engaged in sifting through the CCTV footage at over 30 locations in Sigra, Cantt, Lanka, and Pandeypur Lalpur police station areas.
The sources claimed that the probe so far revealed that the rape survivor was drugged repeatedly to keep her subdued for continuous physical abuse. It is also suspected that the girl was taken to a spa centre as a guest. There, she was made to sniff some substance and then forced into prostitution on the pretext of giving massages to the customers.
In fact, the victim’s father had been claiming that when she returned home on the night of April 3, she was in a state of intoxication and remained disoriented for two days.