Woman raped, brutalised in Mumbai dies in hospital

MUMBAI: A 32-year-old woman who was raped and brutalised with an iron rod in Mumbai, died while undergoing treatment at a hospital in the wee hours of Saturday, police said.

According to Mumbai deputy commissioner Maheshwar Reddy, the police control room received a phone call at 3.20am on Friday, informing them about an injured couple in the city’s Sakinaka area. On reaching the spot, the police found a woman, who was bleeding profusely, inside a parked tempo.

“The police officers drove the tempo and rushed her to the Rajawadi Hospital,” Mumbai Police commissioner Hemant Nagrale said.

A 45-year-old pavement dweller was arrested in connection with the case on Friday, after he was spotted exiting the tempo in a CCTV footage, officials familiar with the matter said. He has been remanded in

custody till September 21, and booked under sections 302 (murder), 376 (rape), 323 (assault) and 34 (common intention) of the Indian Penal Code.

Police said they were yet to ascertain the motive behind the crime. “As the victim was

unconscious, her statement could not be recorded. Police are as yet clueless about what exactly happened...,” Nagrale said.

The crime bore resemblance to the December 16, 2012 Delhi gang rape case, in which a woman was assaulted and brupolice talised in a moving bus. She died about two weeks later in a hospital in Singapore where she was taken for emergency treatment. The incident had outraged the entire nation and triggered street protests and candlelight vigils across the country, eventually leading to tougher punishment for crimes against women.

Six suspects were arrested for the crime, one of whom was alleged to have died by suicide in jail. Another, a juvenile, was given the maximum sentence of three years’ imprisonment in a reform facility under the Juvenile Justice Act. The other four were hanged to death in March, 2020.

Calling the Sakinaka incident, a “blot on humanity”, Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray said in a statement: “The rape and subsequent death of a woman in the Sakinaka area is an act of disgrace to humanity and the perpetrator will be severely punished. In