Siraj Rehman Khan (24), one of the five arrested accused in the August 22 photojournalist gang-rape case, now figures in another sex crime. He has now been charged with kidnapping and molesting a 32-year-old woman from Dhobi Ghat in south-central Mumbai.
Acting on a complaint lodged by the daughters of the victim woman, the Dhobi Ghat police formally registered a case of kidnapping and molestation against Khan on Wednesday night.
The case against Khan is that he allegedly dragged the victim woman, a TB patient, to an isolated place near Dhobi Ghat near Mahalaxmi railway station, in the small hours of August 19 and allegedly molested her. The victim women died at the Katurba Hospital on August 27, a day after her admission there.
Though the victim woman’s daughters had approached the police on the day of incident itself, the police had not registered any case against Khan. They had let him off after giving a stern warning to him. However, after a public outcry over the photojournalist’s gang rape, the police have registered a case of kidnapping and molestation against Khan.
Khan’s is third sex crime involving the arrested accused in the photojournalist case. Earlier, three of the five accused in the photojournalist gang rape case - Vijay Jadhav, Salim Ansari and Kasim Bengali - had early this week been booked for allegedly raping a 19-year-0ld girl on the very defunct Shakti Mill premises on July 31.
So much so that the victim girl had identified the three accused, who were among five hoodlum who had allegedly gang-raped the girl at the Shakti Mill compound, through which she was passing though along with her male friend on the evening of July 31. like in the photojournalist gang case, the quintet tied up the victim’s male friend to a tree and gang-raped her.