A girl gangraped by five men in 2013 was gangraped again this month. The family says that the crime was committed by the same men who are out on bail to avenge the fact that the Dalit family had refused to drop the case against them. However, in a twist, the police have arrested two other men, one of whom claims to have had consensual sex with her. As the rape survivor is trying to deal with the ultimate trauma in a Rohtak hospital, SHAlINI SAKSENA visits the city to find out that even though accusations are flying hard and fast, the suffering of the girl and the family is beyond belief

She lies listless on the bed with an intravenous on her right hand. Her eyes are vacant. Once in a while, her hand goes to her mouth to suppress a cough. She is petite; her weight less than 50 kg. One can her the collar bones as she struggles to speak. Her voice is almost inaudible. One has to strain the ears to catch what she is trying to say.

“I want the people who have done this to me to be hanged. But before that, I want to see these men chased like mad dogs and stoned on the streets,” Rani (name changed) says and she lapses into another bout of coughing as her mother rushes to her aid.

“She is really in no condition to speak right now. She has suffered enough. It is bad enough that a woman survives a rape. It is indescribable what she must have gone through, the trauma, the fear, the beating and the threats to her family a second time at the hands of the same men,” Praveen Kumar, a cousin who belongs to Rohtak, tells you.

The parents of the girl don’t want to face the Press and have nothing to say. All that the mother wants is that justice prevails.

“Aap hi bataiye, maa-baap kya keh sakte hainIJ Their daughter has been gangraped twice by the same men. The family belongs to a lower caste. They are poor. Who will listen to themIJ Nobody came forward the first time round. They know there is no one standing with them. Most of the relatives have abandoned them because they don’t want to be involved. Garib ke apne problems hain. He doesn’t have the time to fight others’ battles. We all know that in India, people with money are the ones with all the power. Do you think that a person who is from a lower caste, lives in Haryana and earns less than Rs 10,000 a month has a voiceIJ” Praveen asks.

This is the reason why he stands with the family in their hour of need. He does all the running around, talking to the doctors and ensuring that his 20-year old cousin is well looked after.

Cut to October 22, 2013, Bhiwani. Rani, then only 17, is coerced into a car by a girl named Anamika who had befriended her. There are two other men sitting in the car, one of them named Amit. As soon as Rani sits, the car speeds off. A call is made and a few more men sit in the car. This is when alarm bells start ringing for Rani. But it is already too late. She is forced to drink something.

later, she was too frightened and traumatised with what happened to her to remember the details. All she remembers is that she lost consciousness. One doesn’t need to know what really transpired. Suffice to say she was gangraped and a video was also made to buy Rani’s silence. She was told that if she lodged a complaint, the video would go viral. But Rani and her family wanted the culprits to be punished.

It all started when Amit, a neighbour in Rajiv Colony near City Railway Station in Bhiwani, started following Rani to college. After finishing her Class XII, where she scored around 70 per cent, Rani had taken admission in Bhiwani Government College to pursue her B Com (Pass).

“My sister is very intelligent. All she wanted to do was finish her studies, get a good percentage so that she could get into a good college to pursue her dream of either sitting for the Civil Services or become a professor of Mathematics,” Praveen says.

He also tells you that she is very fair and beautiful. Boys in the neighbourhood would pass comments. But she would always ignore them. There was no point in picking up a fight with such people. “We don’t know how she came in touch with this Anamika. She knows her family’s social standing. She just wanted to make her parents proud of her. But God had other ideas for her life,” Praveen tells you.

life for the family changed after Rani was gangraped by five men. There were visits to the hospital and then to the police station to file an FIR. According to a report, the Sessions judge presiding over the case had said that the rape survivor had changed her statement many times in 2013 and that it is difficult to find out what the real truth was as the survivor gave different versions on the date, the location and the names of the people who were involved in the gangrape.

The plea that was filed according to Section 319 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973, said that the rape survivor had submitted a plea to include the names of Akash, Sandeep and Mausam as three accused in the gangrape much later after the case was registered.

But according to the family, this is not correct. Rani gave names of five people — Amit, Jagmohan, Sandeep, Mausam and Akash at one go. In fact, the family says that Sandeep is a history sheeter. He has allegedly been been involved in ruining lives of many young girls before he raped Rani in 2013.

The family says that there is a complaint against Sandeep in Mitathal village where he allegedly forcibly married a Brahmin girl. Sandeep, according to the survivor’s family, is a Jat. Ask why this information was not given to the police and Praveen tells you that nobody listens to the weak. “We don’t want to get into what Sandeep did in the past and what he did to another girl. We are concerned with our girl,” Praveen says.

With the FIR (727/2013) filed in Bhiwani came the threats to withdraw the complaints. Neighbours would come to Rani’s family with messages that the family of the accused wanted an out of court settlement and that the family would be given Rs 50 lakh, or even more, provided that the FIR was withdrawn. But the family refused to give in to pressure. When money failed to buy the family, they were threatened with physical harm — that the father and Rani’s younger brother who was studying in Class X, at that time, would be killed.

Fearing for their lives, the family, by the end of 2013, fled Bhiwani to take up residence in Rohtash Colony, Rohtak. The father left his occupation as a mason and took up making coir charpais. The mother took to tailoring. Between the two of them, the family earning is approximately Rs 18,000 a month.

“With two children studying and the family trying to remain hidden, it is difficult to survive. But they got by. The younger brother, too, was traumatised with what had happened to his sister. The fact that he couldn’t do anything to bring the perpetrators to book weighs heavily on him. Despite this, he scored over 75 per cent in his Class X exam,” Praveen tells you.

The next three years were spent in slowly trying to rebuild their lives. In 2015, Rani took admission in Government College for Women aka IC College in Rohtak, Haryana, to pursue B Sc (Maths). All appeared to be well. Then on July 13, 2016, tragedy struck the family again.

At around 1:30 pm, just as Rani was coming out of her college to go home, she saw Amit and Jagmohan standing near a car at the Ambedkar Chowk where the Women Police Station, Rohtak, is located. To say that she was shocked is putting it mildly. For three years, the family had thought they were safe. But they were wrong.

Amit and Jagmohan forced Rani into the car in which Akash, Sandeep and Mausam were already sitting. In her written statement to the police, she said that once inside the car, she was slapped on the face by Akash. One even swore at her and, gripping her neck, said that they had finally caught up with her. They also said that this would be her her father’s last day as well since they knew that he was working in Bahadurgarh. They wanted to know where she had hidden her younger brother whom they tried to look for in various Government schools. Where she was taken in the car she doesn’t remember since she was again forced to drink something and lost consciousness. The next four hours are a blank, although at one point in her stupor she felt that someone was removing her pants. That is when she fainted again.

Just before they threw her out of the car, one man, she doesn’t remember who, gripped her neck in an attempt to kill her when another stopped him by saying: ‘We will get into more trouble if we kill her’. They then threw Rani out of the car on Panipat-Gohana road with a power house just a stone’s throw away at around 5:30 pm.

On the basis of the written statement that Rani had submitted on July 14, 2016, the police arrested Amit, Sandeep and Jagmohan who were sent to four days of remand — till July 24, 2016. They were produced before the Magistrate on July 25 and sent to two days of police custody.

But on July 24, 2016, the case took a twist with the arrest of one Sandeep (24) of Kiloi village, who has a sports shop near Sheila by-pass in Rohtak, and his friend, Pramod (35) president of multipurpose health workers association of Rohtak. Sandeep has told the police that Rani was known to him and had called him near Mansarover Park in the town on July 13, 2016.

It was here that he introduced Rani to Pramod. The duo then left together in a car. Pramod has told the police that he and Rani went to a hotel where they had a few drinks and consensual sex. At around 3:30 pm, Pramod called Sandeep and the two then dropped Rani near Sukhpura Chowk. Whether Rani knew Sandeep and went with Pramod has yet to be confirmed. Rani’s statement before a Magistrate under Section 164 has been recorded. A copy of the statement is yet to be given to the police.

Meanwhile, Amit, Jagmohan and Sandeep have given CCTV footage that places them at different places at the alleged time of the incident on July 13, 2016. Jagmohan’s family has submitted footage that places him at a bank in Bhiwani where he went to withdraw money. There is a withdrawal slip as well.

Amit’s family says that he was not in Rohtak on the day of the incident and that he had gone to pick up his nephew at 12 pm; there is  footage for this.

Sandeep’s family says that on July 13, he had taken a train — Ekta Express — for Ambala at 4:20 pm. Apparently, there is evidence that proves his presence at Ambala and Kurukshetra. The police has said that it received CCTV footage and the same is being verified.

However, the family sticks with the version that Rani was gangraped by the same five men, as in 2013. Praveen says that a few women passing by saw Rani after she had been thrown out of the car and tried to revive her by rubbing her hands and feet. A call was immediately made to the police who rushed to the spot. The police then called the father, but since he was away in Bahadurgarh, Rani’s mother and brother rushed to the spot and took her to the Civil Hospital. It was from here that Rani was then shifted to Pt Bhagwat Dayal Sharma, Post Graduate Institute of Medical Sciences (PGI), where she is now in ward number 24.

A witness, Ramesh Kumar, whose house is less than 30 feet from where Rani was found, says that the passers-by had brought the girl to his house where they laid her on a cot. “We all thought that she had fainted because it was so hot. The two women who were massaging her hands had thought the same. It was when the police came that we realised the truth. She was just lying there on the cot. It was good that the police found her mobile and her family was contacted fast,” Ramesh says, adding that he didn’t hear any car pass by or, for that matter, stop near his house.

But it is a busy route, one taken by those wanting to go to Panipat or Gohana via Rohtak. A girl is abducted from a busy roundabout and then thrown on a road that is frequently used and nobody saw anything is odd. Stranger still is that the spot from where she was picked up and where she was found is approximately 5 km away. But what is more alarming is that there are some who want to hush the entire episode. They want to know why the media is trying to highlight the case when efforts are being made to suppress the matter.

Praveen says that attempts to ensure that the investigation is slow will be made. “The men who did this to my sister are very rich. They are land owners. One of the accused — Amit’s — brother is in the Air Force. Earlier, Amit was a property dealer. Obviously they are very rich and will do anything to stay out of jail,” Praveen says.

Not surprising, considering that of the five accused in the Bhiwani rape, only two — Amit and Jagmohan — were arrested. Though a polygraph test was done on the other accused, they were let off. In early May 2016, Amit and Jagmohan made bail and in less than two months, they tracked Rani down only to rape her again for not withdrawing the FIR against them.

The family tells you that the two, in connivance with the other three, hatched this plot to teach Rani and her family a lesson that they are never going to forget. “Who can forget that you were gangraped, let alone twiceIJ Is this something from which you can ever recoverIJ But she is strong. She was strong enough to give us the indication that these were the same five men. She made a fist and pointed a thumb behind her shoulder. She then opened all the five fingers to indicate they were the same five men from the past who had done this to her,” Praveen tells you.

As for the medical report, the doctors neither confirm nor rule out rape. The preliminary medical report says that the physically condition of the girl is stable. But the family says that it is the mental trauma that Rani has undergone that needs to be taken into consideration. “She is strong and will come out with the truth soon. But she needs time to recover,” Praveen says.

Dr Rakesh Gupta, director, PGI, Rohtak, tells you that a medical exam has been conducted by the hospital where the rape survivor went first. “They will present the report to the police. We are looking after all aspects of her treatment and have constituted a special medical board for the same. A psychologist is also part of this board. She is on a drip for a minor issue. That is nothing of major concern,” Dr Gupta says.

The police is also not to forthcoming. “The medical report is awaited. It usually takes two to three months in such cases but we have requested it to be treated on a priority basis. Until the report comes, we can’t say anything. We have arrested three people (out of the five men that have been named by the survivor) and investigations are on. Teams have been sent to catch the other two. How can we give you any information when the investigation is still onIJ When we have all the details, you (media) will know,” SIT in charge DSP Pushpa Khatri says.

Rohtak SP Rakesh Arya tells you that the version of the accused has been recorded and they are being interrogated and efforts to arrest the other two are on. “DNA samples of the accused have been taken. That’s all that can be said at this juncture,” Arya tells you.

Meanwhile, the judicial magistrate first class extended the police remand of three of the five accused Sandeep, Jagmohan and Amit (from Bhiwani and named by Rani) and Sandeep and Pramod (from Rohtak not named by Rani) for further investigation.