The Hindu : Front Page : Four held on rape charge

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Nov 07, 2007
ePaper

Front Page

Front Page

Four held on rape charge

Special Correspondent

BHUBANESWAR: Four persons have been arrested on the charge of gang-raping a 27-year-old woman near Konark in Orissa’s Puri district on Sunday afternoon.

The victim, who hailed from Satyabadi locality of Puri, was returning from Puri when the accused persons took her inside a forest alongside Puri-Konark Road and sexually assaulted her.

According to Officer-in-charge of Konark police station Sanatan Panigrahi, the woman, a mother of two, had come to Konark with a neighbour.

The accused persons stopped the passenger bus in which they were travelling in and asked them to get down from the bus that was on its way to Puri.

After the two got down and the bus headed for Puri, the accused persons took the woman aside and made her neighbour Prashanta Nanda board the next bus to Puri, Mr. Panigrahi said.

The accused persons then took the woman inside the nearby jungle and sexually assaulted her.

The Konark police managed to reach the spot on receiving an anonymous call about the incident and were able to arrest one of the five members of the gang who said that two others had taken the woman to a nearby location to help her board a bus to Puri.

Police were able to trace the two other accused along with the woman when they were already travelling in a bus.

The woman told the police that four of the five accused had assaulted her sexually.

While three accused were arrested immediately, another was caught on Monday. The fifth accused was still at large, Mr. Panigrahi said.

The four arrested persons — Santosh Swain (24), Gaurang Pradhan (25), R.K. Das (29) and Devanand Parida (30) — were produced before the court at Nimapara on Tuesday afternoon and remanded to judicial custody, Mr. Panigrahi added.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Front Page

News Update

Stories in this Section