M A I N   N E W S

Three arrested for Sonepat law student’s gangrape
BS Malik

Sonepat, May 19
The police have arrested three of the four alleged accused in the case of the gangrape of a first-year student of an all-woman law university near here from Haridwar. The trio has been taken into five-day police custody.

The victim, a teenaged girl from Delhi pursuing BA-LLB from Khanpur Kalan’s Bhagat Phool Singh Mahila Vishwavidyalaya, alleged that she was abducted from near the varsity gate on May 16 by four men and then gangraped. The men included the in-charge of the university mess, she had said in her complaint.

"A case of abduction and rape has been registered against the three accused," Rohtak Range IGP Alok Mittal said, adding that a search is on for the fourth accused.

In her police complaint, the 19-year-old girl said she was pushed into a jeep by four youths on Wednesday morning when she had stepped outside the campus to purchase a notebook from a shop. She was then taken to the fields nearby where she was gangraped.

"The traumatised victim broke down before other girls of her hostel and the incident was reported to the police on Thursday evening," a senior police official said.

SP Arun Singh had formed five teams under the supervision of two DSPs to nab the alleged accused. The alleged accused -- Amit and Jai Pal of Khanpur Kalan and Bhupinder of Murlana village -- were paraded before a group of students of the college in Gohana’s Sadar Police Station for identification. They were then produced in a Gohana court and were taken into five-day police custody.

Despite the arrest of the alleged accused, the resignation of hostel chief warden Sahib Kaur and assurances by the university and district administration, agitating students continued to sit in dharna in front of the main gate of the BPS Mahila Vishwavidyalaya on the second day today.

They want the university Vice Chancellor to be dismissed and the former hostel chief warden Sahib Kaur to be arrested.

INL secretary general Ajay Singh Chautala also reached the campus today. Extending his party’s support for the students’ demands, he demanded a probe into the alleged suicide by three varsity students in February and March.

Meanwhile, some women activists and an INSO leader reportedly manhandled a Rohtak-based reporter of national English daily when he was interacting with agitating students at the dharna site. When another journalist tried to intervene, he too was manhandled.

(With PTI inputs)