A minor girl was allegedly gang-raped by eight persons at a village in Maharashtra’s Palghar district, the police said on Sunday, according to The Indian Express. She was assaulted for hours between Friday night and Saturday morning.
The matter came to light when the 15-year-old girl told her male friend over a phone message that she had been kidnapped. The police said that around 2 pm on Saturday, the girl’s father had informed them that she had been missing since the previous night. The father said that he had managed to speak to her on the phone, and she was crying during the conversation.
“The teenager had messaged her friend that she was kidnapped,” the newspaper quoted an unidentified police officer as saying. “The friend then passed on the message to her family members after which the father had come to the police station.”
The girl was later traced to an isolated location near the sea shore.
The police alleged that the accused persons raped the girl at an unoccupied bungalow and then took her to the sea shore, where they again sexually assaulted her, PTI reported.
“In her complaint lodged on Saturday, the victim said that her ordeal began at 8 pm on December 16 that continued till 10 am the next day...” a spokesperson for the Palghar district rural police said.
The police arrested the eight accused persons in the early hours of Sunday. They have been booked under several provisions of the Indian Penal Code, including 376 (D) (gang-rape), 366 (A) (procuration of minor girl), 341 (wrongful restraint), 342 (wrongful confinement) and 323 (voluntarily causing hurt).
The police have also invoked sections of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act in the case. The accused persons were taken to court and remanded to police custody, a senior official told The Indian Express.
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