Suspects Rajput and Rambabu

BHOPAL: In a chilling reminder of the 2017 gang-rape of an IAS aspirant in Bhopal , a 19-year-old schoolgirl was raped by a BHEL contractual security guard and an accomplice inside an abandoned quarters of the PSU on Saturday morning. News of the horrific crime trickled out on Monday.

The survivor was out with a friend when the duo allegedly beat them up, forced the couple to pose for obscene pictures and videos and threatened to send them to her family unless they submitted to their demands. They dragged the girl behind a church and raped her, say police. Both the accused — Rambabu Suryawanshi, 35, and Rakesh Rajput, 45 — were arrested after police tracked them through the girl’s phone that they had snatched, additional SP Sanjay Sahu said.

Suryawanshi works as a security guard and is a father of three while Rajput is an employee of a BHEL contractor and have two kids. Police are trying to find out if the duo had preyed on any other couple before this.

The girl, who is in Class XII, was chatting with a friend of the same age in a deserted spot near Saint Francis Church in Barkheda Pathani when the suspects, who live nearby, spotted them. They suddenly pummelled the teenagers in a blitz-style assault and dragged the scared and disorientated duo into an abandoned BHEL quarters, where they continued beating them with sticks, says the complaint.

Then, they forced the girl to strip, took obscene photos and videos of her and threatened to send them to her parents and post on social media unless they paid Rs 5,000, said SI Neetu Kunsaria, the investigating officer. The duo sent the boy out on his scooter to fetch the money after which they raped the girl for 45 minutes. When the boy returned with Rs 5,000, he found the duo gone and the girl weeping in a corner of the broken-down building.

She said that the rapists had threatened her to return to the same spot the next day if she didn’t want the obscene photos and videos to go viral, SI Kunsaria said.

The traumatised duo was scared of going to police. But a friend, who had loaned the Rs 5,000 to the boy and accompanied him there, persuaded them to go to the cops. They did so, and police registered a case of gang-rape, extortion and assault under IPC and IT Act.

Within an hour, police tracked down the accused by locating the girl’s mobile phone. Suryawanshi and Rajput were arrested from their homes, located merely 300 metres from the crime scene, on Saturday afternoon. They were produced in court the same day and remanded in jail. It wasn’t until nearly 48 hours later that information on the horrific crime trickled out.

ASP Sahu said that the suspects are neighbours at D-Sector of Barkheda Pathani. They have confessed to their crime, he said.

The arrests were quick, but questions remain on why police did not take the suspects on remand to investigate if they were involved in similar crimes in the past, and why they didn’t charge the duo with abduction and robbery as well (since they had looted the couple’s phones and whatever money they had).

SHO Govindpura Ashok Kumar Singh refused to share details of the case, but DIG Irshad Wali said police will investigate if the suspects had sexually assaulted girls in the area earlier. “The FIR was registered according to the details provided by the survivor. Sections of loot and abduction will be added if she has mentioned it in her statement,” he said.

