india

Updated: Sep 09, 2015 13:13 IST

Police rescued two Nepalese women from an upscale Gurgaon apartment on Monday night after a letter from the Nepal embassy said the women employed by a Saudi diplomat were allegedly raped, sodomised and assaulted for four months.

No arrests were made, but the Gurgaon Police wrote to the ministry of external affairs on Tuesday seeking permission for further investigation. An FIR was lodged but did not name the diplomat.

The Saudi embassy, talking to the IANS news agency, dismissed the charges as “completely false” and “contrary to facts in our possession” and said it would wait for the Indian government to clarify the matter as per diplomatic norms.

A Saudi embassy official also disapproved of the way police were damaging a person and country’s reputation on the basis of mere charges made by a third person and said it was a violation of the rights of the diplomat and his family.

According to IANS, the diplomat and his unknown friends and guests were booked for gangraping the two Nepalese women while his wife and daughter were booked for torturing the victims.

“We received a letter from the Nepal embassy on Monday and they informed us that two Nepal nationals were taken hostage in an apartment in Gurgaon,” Gurgaon’s commissioner of police Navdeep Singh Virk said.

“Teams were formed and they were rescued. Preliminary investigation revealed the accused is first secretary to the ambassador of Saudi Arabia and lives at Caitriona Towers, Ambience Island.”

The cops were assaulted when they reached the place to rescue the victims, police said.

The case was registered against unnamed persons under sections 377 (unnatural offences), 376 (rape), 506 (threat to life), 323 (punishment for voluntarily causing hurt), and 342 (punishment for wrongful confinement).

The victims’ statements were recorded before a magistrate in which they said they were gangraped by six foreigners and others at the Gurgaon apartment. They were often offered to the guests visiting the diplomat’s apartment, they said.

Police said the diplomat’s wife was aware of what was going on and attacked the victims with a knife twice apart from threatening them. Members of an NGO along with police teams rushed to the apartment and after a fight with the guards and the diplomat’s family members, rescued the victims, police said.

According to the victims, they were taken hostage four months back after they were offered a job in Saudi Arabia by a placement agency in Nepal at a monthly salary of Rs 30,000 along with lodging and food.

The placement agency got a commission of Rs 1 lakh for providing one woman to an agent named Anwar in Delhi who used to supply women to the accused, police said.

Balkrishan Pandey, conveyor of the Maiti India NGO, said, “We received information 11 days ago after another woman from Nepal was sent to work in the same apartment. After staying for three days she managed to escape and narrated the incident to NGO members and Nepal embassy officials.”

The victims were often taken to other cities, including Nainital and Agra, for two nights and three days to be offered as prostitutes, police said.

“A security guard helped us and provided a mobile phone recently, after which we contacted the NGO members and stayed in touch with them. We informed them the daily routine and it was planned that they would raid the apartment on Monday,” one of the victims said.

“When we were hired, the employer took us to Saudi Arabia for 15 days and we were kept in a hotel. There he did not touch us or misbehave with us but after returning from there in May he asked us to massage him. He then raped us and forced us to have unnatural sex and oral sex. After that, he offered us to his foreigner friends regularly,” the victim said.