An eight-member Special Investigation Team (SIT) was constituted on Thursday to probe the Varanasi gang-rape case after the families of the arrested accused submitted an application to the police, picking holes in the allegations levelled by the 19-year-old complainant, officials said.
The SIT, formed by Varanasi Police Commissioner Mohit Agarwal, has been tasked with ensuring that the “investigation is conducted transparently and no innocent person is wrongly implicated in the case”.
The police have arrested 14 persons in the case so far.
The SIT will be headed by Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP) Pramod Kumar and has ADCPs Shruti Srivastava and Neetu, Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) Vidhush Saxena and four inspector-rank officials as its members.
In a press statement, the Varanasi police said the eight-member team “will also examine any new facts that emerge during the probe” and that “any accused not named in the FIR but identified during the course of the investigation will be arrested only after a recommendation of the SIT”.
The 19-year-old’s father had on April 4 filed a missing person’s complaint, stating that his daughter was missing since March 29. The police traced the woman to her friend’s house later that evening. The next day, the teenaged woman, accompanied by her parents, visited the local police station and filed a complaint, alleging she was “wrongfully confined and gang-raped” for five days. She claimed that she was drugged by some of the accused and taken to multiple locations in Varanasi, including a hotel and a café, where she was sexually assaulted.
An FIR was registered on charges of gang rape and criminal confinement against 12 persons by name and 11 unidentified individuals.
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In their application to the police, the families of the accused questioned why no missing person’s report was filed for five days since she went missing on March 29. They also questioned why the complainant did not report the alleged rape to the police when she was recovered from her friend’s house on April 4.
They said even as the complainant claimed to have been raped between March 29 and April 4, she stayed twice at her friend’s house and did not mention the sexual assault incident to her friend. They also questioned why no visible injury marks found on her body if she was allegedly raped by 23 people. She did not return home even as her friend’s house is around 500 metres from her residence, they said.
In their letter, they claimed that CCTV footage from March 31 showed the complainant walking cheerfully with three of the accused. Several posts and photos were uploaded on the victim’s Instagram account on April 2, in which she appeared hale and hearty, they further claimed.
The letter also stated that the victim messaged one of the accused on Instagram on March 31, informing him that she was coming to a café. The family questioned why the victim did not raise an alarm at the hotels and cafés where she claimed to have been assaulted. They also asked why she went with the same accused again on April 3, despite claiming to have been sexually assaulted by him on March 31.
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The police said some people claimed that the complainant was initially unwilling to return to her parents’ home after she was recovered.
The families also alleged that the complainant’s family demanded money from some of the accused, threatening to implicate them in case they didn’t pay up. The FIR, they alleged, was part of a planned scheme to blackmail and extort money.
They claimed that the girl’s parents knew of her whereabouts between March 29 and April 4, and that most of the accused were previously connected to the woman through Instagram.
When contacted, Police Commissioner Mohit Agarwal said the SIT will also examine the evidence against the 14 accused arrested in the case. “The DNA profiling of the accused is also being done,” he added.
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The SIT will also probe the allegation that the victim did not name some of the persons named in the FIR in her statement before the magistrate, it is learnt.
During her medical examination no external injuries were found on the complainant, a police officer said.
