Karnataka’s Home Minister has kicked up a storm by saying “if a woman is raped by two men, it is not gangrape.”
The Minister, KJ George, was commenting on the incident when he said: “How can you say gangrapeIJ Gangrape means four-five people.”
A 22-year-old woman was gang-raped on Saturday last by a driver and another man after she took a private mini-bus on her way home. The men allegedly drove around for three hours and repeatedly assaulted the woman before dumping her near a temple.
Two men were arrested by the police earlier this week as the IT city was shamed by comparisons to the 2012 Delhi gang-rape of a young medical student on a moving bus.
Facing anger on a day his boss, Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi, was set to tour the State, George held a Press conference to defend himself.
“You ask some question when I am in the car...Then you only take point one. I am a media friendly person. I am such person who is very serious about these type of crimes. Mediapersons should appreciate that the police have arrested these people. Media and public should condemn these kind of things,” George said on Friday.
He said “in strict technical terms” it was a gang-rape case though a “gang” usually implies more than two people.
The Minister has been pilloried by activists who have called him irresponsible and insensitive.