The Karnataka Police have arrested five people in connection with the gangrape of a woman in Mysuru, Director General of Police Praveen Sood told NDTV on Saturday. Another accused is still absconding.
On Tuesday, a group of five men raped a woman near Chamundi Hills on the outskirts of Mysuru, according to the police.
All five arrested in the case work as labourers and hail from Tamil Nadu’s Tiruppur district, Sood told reporters. He said that the police cannot reveal the identities of the accused on account of an order by the Madras High Court.
Based on preliminary information, one of the accused is a minor, aged 17 years, News18 quoted Sood as saying. The police are verifying his age, he added.
The police have said that the men, who were reportedly drunk, accosted the woman and her male friend and demanded money from them. When they refused to give money, the group attacked them.
The Karnataka DGP said on Saturday that the police earlier had incomplete information, as the woman and her friend were undergoing treatment, according to The News Minute.
“We have to be sensitive to the trauma and suffering of the woman,” the officer said. “The male friend with her had given us some information but that was also incomplete because he was unconscious and it was around 7 pm and it was dark.”
The gangrape has elicited strongly-worded reactions from several political leaders, who have called for stringent punishment to the accused. On Friday, former Karnataka Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy hinted that the state police should deal with the accused in the Mysuru gangrape case in the way that the Hyderabad Police dealt with the accused in a local rape case in 2019.
The accused in the Hyderabad case were shot dead by the police on a national highway near the city. The police had claimed that the accused attempted to flee while being taken to the murder site to reconstruct the sequence of events.
Karnataka Tourism Minister Anand Singh also remarked that “everything of the perpetrators should be chopped off”.
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