A minor girl was allegedly gang-raped by four teenagers in Assam’s Dibrugarh district. The incident took place in eastern Assam’s Dibrugarh town and close to a National Highway at around 10 pm on Saturday, police said on Sunday while adding that the incident came under notice after a police patrol spotted the 17-year-old girl and a boy accompanying her about an hour later.
The police nabbed three of the four accused within hours of the incident. Two of them are students of higher secondary classes while the third is XII-passed. The fourth is absconding and not much is known about him. Search operation is on for the fourth teenager involved in the crime, police added.
“The girl, accompanied by a boy, was travelling to Panitola area in the town in an auto-rickshaw. The rickshaw, however, dropped the duo near the Banipur railway station and left. later, four teenagers beat up the boy accompanying the girl before raping her,” police said while quoting the FIR filed by the victim girl.
“She alleged that the accused had badly beaten up the youth she was accompanied by. After assaulting him, she said they had thrown him into a nearby pond and took turns to rape her,” said Dibrugarh additional superintendent of police Hiranya Barman.The girl has named all four of them as accused in the FIR, police said. The three arrested teenagers have, however, denied committing rape.
“They said they had only beaten up the youth on finding him in a compromising position with the girl,” Barman said adding the police are waiting for the girl’s medical examination reports.There has been an alarming spurt in cases of rape in Assam in recent years. Rape cases shot up to 1,960 last year from an annual average of 1,707. The figure has crossed 1,200 so far this year.
Several organisations, particularly student bodies, have condemned the incident and demanded immediate action against the accused.