A 17-year-old girl from Chhattisgarh, who ran away with her 25-year-old boyfriend and reached the Pune railway station, was allegedly raped and held captive for days by a Railway Protection Force (RPF) head constable and an NGO employee who worked for a child support group at the station. The alleged crime took place between September 12 and 17 in the rooms in the railway colony that the NGO used, the police said.
The case was handed over to the Pune Government Railway Police (GRP) on September 30 by the Chhattisgarh Police. The Pune GRP nabbed one of the accused in the case, as of now.
The girl lodged a complaint with the local police station in Chhattisgarh after returning home following the alleged assaults and confinement that lasted for over a week.
The victim is a Class 10 student from the Bemetara district in Chhattisgarh. She escaped with her boyfriend, who promised marriage, on September 9, 2023, from her aunt’s house and reached Pune on September 12. At the Pune railway station, the couple was approached by three people who took them to a policeman in uniform… They were made to sit at the police station for a long time by the policeman. They were then taken to a room in the railway colony and were locked there,” the victim told in her statement.
Later, the policeman came to them in plain clothes, she said. He contacted her family over cellphone after taking her parents’ number. “He would come back to the room at 1.30 am to sexually assault me. I was then again taken to the other room where my friend was locked,” she told.
She said the next day (September 13), another person, an NGO worker visited them. He allegedly sexually assaulted her after taking her to a separate room and demanded Rs 6,000 from the couple, which the boy arranged by calling up a friend back home.
The woman alleged that the two repeatedly raped her until September 17, when her family visited Pune and took her back to Chhattisgarh. She shared the information about the assaults with the police and later recorded her statement in front of a judge. An FIR was registered at the local police station and later transferred to the Pune railway police. The two ‘unidentified persons’ have been booked under sections 343 (Wrongful confinement for three or more days), 450 (House-trespass in order to commit offence punishable with imprisonment for life), 384 (extortion), 376 (2) (N)[rape by one or more in a group], 506 (criminal intimidation), 34C (common intention) of the Indian Penal Code and sections 4, 6 and 8, all dealing with sexual assault, of the Prevention of Children from Sexual Offences (Pocso) Act.
Additional Superintendent of Police (GRP) Ganesh Shinde said that they arrested the NGO worker and were looking for the constable. “The Chhattisgarh Police have informed us that the boy with whom the girl had eloped had also been booked by the local police and arrested,” Shinde said.
