The Dindoshi police on Tuesday arrested three of the six youths booked in connection with the gang-rape of a 16-year-old girl at Goregaon in north Mumbai on Friday night, while they intensified the search for the three remaining culprits.
Identifying the three arrested as Wasim Vatta (21), Yuvraj Pillai (20) and Shivkumar Kalwa (19), the police said that the three were arrested from Diva in Thane district on Tuesday.
Talking to media persons, Deputy Commissioner of Police Pravin Patil said: “The three arrested boys were among the four youths who had allegedly raped the minor girl at Goregaon’s Santosh Nagar locality on Friday night. We are looking for one more alleged rapist and two other boys who abetted the crime”.
Two of the accused boys had invited the victim girl to a flat shared by four of their friends for Dhanteras puja on Friday. After the puja, the boys offered to drop her home and instead took her to an empty drainage tunnel — and allegedly raped her, after spiking her soft drink. “The victim lost consciousness and four of the six boys and took turns to rape her,” Patil said.
All the six boys had known the victim, an eighth standard drop-out, for quite some time. “Anticipating that the girl would approach police, all six accused fled their locality after the incident. We tracked them from a friend’s place,” Patil said.
They victim lodged a complaint only on Sunday after she overcomed the initial shock. According to the police, four of the six accused in the case have criminal antecedents and have been booked for thefts, robberies and trespassing in the past,” a senior police officer said.