Jubilee Hills gang-rape: All suspects held

Hyderabad: Taking the investigation in the Jubilee Hills gang-rape case nearer to its conclusion, the City Police on Tuesday announced the arrest of two more juveniles, taking the total number of arrests to six.

City Police Commissioner CV Anand, addressing a late evening press conference here, said everything was crystal clear now, with the police having drawn out the sequence of events of May 28 based on evidence collected over the last one week and corroborated several times using different media including videos of the offence and CCTV footage.

The Commissioner, who said the suspects, five of them minors and one major, Saduddin Malik, had themselves shot on their mobile phones the crime and circulated it first among themselves, ‘as if it was heroism’, after which it was shared among friends in WhatsApp, from where it further landed on different social media platforms. The six therefore were being booked under sections of the IT Act as well, apart from the rape charges under the Indian Penal Code and Protection Of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act.

As for the sixth juvenile, Anand said the police came to know of his presence in the Mercedes Benz from videos circulated by the suspects. He had forcefully kissed the victim in the Benz, but got off the vehicle when the other five suspects shifted with the victim into a Toyota Innova, which was the main crime vehicle.

Whether this Innova is a government vehicle is being confirmed, while the driver of the Innova, who also got off it with another minor taking over the wheel, will be questioned to see whether he knew of the offence.

Anand, who said the suspects had misbehaved and molested the victim while in the pub itself, said the suspects thought she might create trouble as she left the pub, and followed her. Their body language, he said, indicated that they had made up their plan by then.

Narrating the sequence of events, Anand said the entire episode actually had the beginnings on March 28 when a juvenile from Bengaluru made plans for the party, for which he contacted Osman Ali Khan here, who booked the pub. The Benguluru boy then announced the party on Instagram, with a fee of about Rs.1200 per head being fixed. Though this was reduced to Rs.900 by the pub later, the organizers continued to collect Rs.1250 from those wanting to attend. An advance payment of Rs.1 lakh was done to the pub two days before the party.

The victim paid Rs.1,300 and entered the pub along with a friend of hers, also a minor. After the event and the rape, she went home, where her parents saw injuries on neck. Despite prodding and requesting, she did not reveal anything, which worried her father, who then got in touch with the police on May 31 and a case under sections 9 and 10 of POCSO was registered and an FIR too was issued.

The victim, who revealed only bare details initially and did not know most of the suspects, opened up after four or five hours of counseling at the Bharosa Centre, when she came out on how she was raped by the five suspects.

Anand, who said the police had got the video after BJP MLA M Raghunandan Rao released it, said the investigation took time, because it being such a serious offence, the police had to corroborate everything.

“We went by evidence, not by what politicians said,” he said in response to a query and said further investigation was still on to tie up a few loose ends.

As for the MLA’s source for the video, Anand said the MLA himself would have to reveal that.

“We have gone through the entire CCTV footage from inside the pub, outside it, the main roads and from the social media footage the suspects themselves circulated. We have now come out to a minute-to-minute sequence of what happened on May 28,” he said, adding that the two juveniles apprehended on Tuesday would be produced before the Juvenile Justice Board.

On queries on allegations of the Home Minister’s grandson’s involvement, Anand said police had not got any evidence of even his presence.

“It is a baseless allegation. If anyone has evidence, let them give it to us. We will take action,” he said.

Cases filed under tough sections

The City Police has invoked Sections 376 d of IPC (gang rape), Section 323 (voluntarily causing hurt), Sections 366 and 366a (Kidnap/ abduct and rape) against five of the suspects. With the victim being a minor, they have also been charged under the POCSO Act’s Section 5G read with Section 6. This apart, all the suspects are being charged under the Section 67 of the IT Act as well, for circulating the videos of the offence. The punishment would very severe, with life term or even 20 years of imprisonment or even death penalty being possible, the Commissioner said.

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