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Over 30,000 rape cases; only 1 in 4 convicted

Read this story in Bengali

NEW DELHI: Showing exemplary courage, an 18-year-old girl who says she was raped by two men in 2017 got her parents booked when they accepted a bribe from the accused to force her to withdraw her statement in court.The girl says she was raped in August 2017, after which the accused were arrested. One of them, out on interim bail, approached the girl’s parents and offered them Rs 20 lakh if they could convince their daughter to change her statement and withdraw the case. Since they come from a very humble background, they readily agreed.But their daughter would not stay quiet.The girl approached the police on Tuesday and narrated her ordeal. She told them she was raped by two men who were unknown to her. “They had kidnapped me after which they raped me and left me at an abandoned spot,” a police official quoted the girl as saying. The girl added that the accused who was out on bail, Sunil Shahi, approached her parents on April 8 and made this offer to them. She said her parents did not once disapprove of the offer and, instead, asked for advance money so that they could start working on convincing the girl.The victim told the police that she was in her room when her parents met Shahi and heard the entire conversation. She said that as soon as Shahi left her house, she went up to her parents to ask for justification. Instead, they tried to convince her to give a false statement.“I completely denied taking back the case, but my parents didn’t back out either. They kept trying to convince me and I stuck to my stand. The next morning they thrashed me and blackmailed me, saying that they were poor and needed that money,” she said in her complaint.She said that after thrashing her for a while, someone came to their house to hand them Rs 5 lakh as advance money. Her parents hid that money beneath the bed and left for court.The girl, however, pulled out the bag containing the cash they had received and then left for Aman Vihar police station to lodge a complaint. She narrated the entire episode to the police, immediately after which a case under IPC Sections 195 (A) (threatening any person to give false evidence), 506 (threatening any person to give false evidence) and 120 (B) (punishment of criminal conspiracy) and Section 75 of the Juvenile Justice Act was registered.Police said she handed over the first instalment of cash to them and a team was formed to investigate. They said her mother, who did not know about her daughter having approached the police, returned home first was caught by the cops. Her husband, however, managed to flee on hearing of his wife’s arrest. A senior police official said they have launched a manhunt to arrest the accused.