In India's Andhra Pradesh, 21 cops accused of gangraping 11 tribal women in 2007, acquitted

Twenty-one policemen accused of gangraping 11 tribal women at a village in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh 16 years ago have been acquitted by a special court.

According to the Press Trust of India, the court held that the accused were primarily acquitted because of the failure of two investigating officials to conduct a fair probe.

The women belonging to the Kondh tribe were allegedly gangraped by personnel who belonged to Greyhounds, an elite counter-insurgency force, in August 2007. The incident happened in undivided Andhra's Alluri Sitarama Raju district.

The trial commenced in the state's coastal city of Visakhapatnam in 2018 and culminated on Thursday (6) with the acquittal of the personnel.

The court also ordered that the survivors be paid compensation through the District Legal Services Authority. According to a Human Rights Forum (HRF) member, none of the accused policemen was arrested and some of them went on to successfully superannuate while some died, the PTI reported.

M Sarat, vice-president of HRF -- Andhra Pradesh state committee, alleged the "Greyhounds forces had raped 11 tribal women in August 2007 and a police complaint was filed against them but not even a single accused person was arrested".

The forum alleged that a 21-member special police party had gone to Vakapally village on August 20, 2007, for combing operations, where they sexually assaulted the 11 tribal women belonging to the particularly vulnerable tribal group.

"The very fact that the Court has ordered compensation to be paid to the Vakapally rape survivors shows that the court reposed faith in their depositions," HRF said.

According to the forum, the probe against the accused policemen was compromised at the very beginning and carried out with the motive to protect them, disregarding procedures mandated by the criminal code while the forensic medical examinations were vitiated.

(With PTI inputs)