The police on Friday evening arrested four youth for allegedly gang-raping a 13-year-old girl after rendering her unconscious by spiking her cold drink in a house at Vakola in north Mumbai.
The police also took into custody a minor girl who had taken the victim girl to the residence at suburban Vakola — where the incident took place on Thursday evening — on the pretext of attending a birthday party of a common friend.
Identifying four arrested youngsters as Bipin Singh, Sachin Yadav, Venkatesh Naidu and Melwyn D’Souza, the police said that the quartet allegedly perpetrated a sexual assault on the minor girl, after spiking her cold drink and rendering her unconscious.
According to police, the arrested minor girl took the victim girl, her friend, to D’Souza’s residence, where the four youths were consuming liquor. During the chat that followed, the foursome offered a cold drink to the victim girl.
Not knowing that the cold drink had been spiked, the victim girl consumed it. Before long, she fell unconscious.
On her regaining her senses, the victim girl found herself alone in the house. She managed to stagger back to her residence which is in the same locality. On her return home, she experienced giddiness and began vomiting.
Realising something was amiss, her family members rushed her to a nearby civic hospital.
Preliminary physical examination of the victim girl revealed that she had been sexually assaulted.
The police registered a case of sexual assault against the youths who are in the age group of 20 to 25 years.
In a search that followed, the police arrested the four accused youths and the minor girl who had allegedly lured the victim girl to D'Souza's house, in the evening.
The investigators have, meanwhile, recorded the victim girl, whose condition is reported to be stable.