FB FRIEND AMONG THREE HELD FOR GANGRAPING SONEPAT MINOR IN SHIMLA

16yearold victim had got in touch with the prime accused on Facebook few weeks ago: Police

ROHTAK: The Sonepat police have arrested three men from Karnal for allegedly gangraping a minor girl after taking her to a hotel in Himachal Pradesh’s capital Shimla.

The police said the 16-yearold rape survivor had few weeks ago got in touch with the prime accused, a resident of Gharaunda town, on the social networking site Facebook.

On the intervening night of Saturday and Sunday, the accused along with his two friends came outside the victim’s house in Sonepat and insisted her to come out to meet him.

When she did, he along with his friends abducted her and drove her to Shimla, where they all gangraped her in a hotel, police said.

The girl’s family, on not finding her at home on Sunday morning, filed a missing complaint at the local police station. The police then scanned the CCTV footage around the area and found that the minor was taken away in a car in the wee hours of Sunday.

The police said the accused had dumped the minor in Zirakpur in Punjab, from where she managed to reach out to her local relative on Monday. She was brought back to the district, following which a complaint was made and FIR was registered, the police added.

“We have registered the statement of the minor in front of the magistrate and conducted her medical examination, which confirmed gangrape. Based on her statement, we conducted the raids and arrested the three accused from Gharaunda,” Ramesh Chander, the SHO of Civil Lines police station said.

“The girl has identified the accused as her Facebook friend Himanshu and his aides as Kamal and Pramod,” he added. The police said all three had quit studies and were jobless at present. They were produced in the court on Tuesday, which sent them on a three-day police remand.