New Delhi: A 35-year-old woman was allegedly gang-raped by five men and then burnt alive in the yagyashala of a local temple in Uttar Pradesh’s Sambhal district on Saturday.

The victim was sleeping with her two children in their house in a village which falls under Rajpura Police Station. Her husband works as a labourer in Ghaziabad. Police said the five accused barged into the house in the early hours of Saturday and took turns to rape the woman.

According to her husband, the woman tried to call him and her brother after the men left, but couldn’t reach their phones. She then called her cousin and narrated the horror. “But before my wife’s cousin could inform the police and other family members, the men came again and dragged my wife out and took her to a nearby temple where they torched her at the yagyashala,” the husband said in his police complaint.

He further said that his wife had dialled the 100 helpline number before she was set ablaze, but there was no answer.

The five accused have been identified as Aram Singh, Mahaveer, Charan Singh, Gullu and Kumarpal, residents of the same village, who had allegedly been harassing the woman for past few months. They have been booked under IPC’s sections 376D (gang rape), 302 (murder), 201 (causing disappearance of evidence of offence), 147 (punishment for rioting), 148 (rioting, armed with deadly weapon and 149 (every member of unlawful assembly guilty of offence committed in prosecution of common object).

No arrest, however, has been made yet.

“We have secured the audio clip of the last call made by the woman to her cousin on his mobile number in which she mentioned the names of the five accused who had barged into her house and raped her. This is indeed very crucial evidence for us. After lodging an FIR against the accused, two teams have been tasked to nab them. We are very close to arresting them,” Times of India quoted ADG Prem Prakash as saying.