- Friday, April 19, 2024
By: Shubham Ghosh
A 34-YEAR-OLD woman who was brutally raped inside a stationary vehicle in the suburbs of Mumbai, the financial capital of India, in the early hours of Friday (10), succumbed to her injuries at a local hospital early on Saturday (11).
In a horrific attack that resembled the assault on a young medical student aboard a moving bus in New Delhi in December 2012, the woman was sexually assaulted and tortured with an iron rod inserted into her.
A team of police officers found her lying in a pool of blood after they were alerted by the control room which received an emergency call around 3:30 am local time on Friday.
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The cops found disturbing CCTV footage which in which a man was found standing over what looked like a body lying on the ground. The caller who alerted the police said a woman was being beaten by a man, news agency Press Trust of India said.
The seriously injured woman was rushed to a government-run hospital. Preliminary investigation also found bloodstains inside the vehicle where she was allegedly tortured. It was parked by the roadside during the time of the assault.
The PTI reported that a 45-year-old man named Mohan Chouhan was arrested under the charges of rape and attempt to murder. The charges were set to be revised to murder since the victim died.
According to the sources in the police, the accused attacked the woman with a knife after raping and brutally assaulting her.
“During the investigation, it came to light that the woman was raped and brutally assaulted with an iron rod on her body and private parts inside a tempo parked by the roadside,” an official said.
One accused – 45-year-old Mohan Chouhan – has been arrested, PTI said, adding that he had been arrested under charges of rape and attempt to murder.
India’s National Commission for Women condemned the incident and was dismayed by the “barbarity and atrocity” of the attack and asked the police “to immediately intervene… an FIR must be filed”. The body also urged the police to complete the probe in a fair and time-bound manner.
In the 2012 incident, six people were accused of the crime and while one of them was minor at the time of the attack and another allegedly committed suicide inside jail, four others were hanged last till, almost eight years after the victim died in a hospital in Singapore. The incident had caused such a massive uproar in India and abroad that the rulers of the day were forced to make laws dealing with rape tougher.
