Month after Dalit woman was dragged, kidnapped and raped, police arrest second accused

Nearly a month after a Dalit woman was dragged, abducted and allegedly raped in Muktsar district of Punjab, the second person accused for the crime was arrested on Sunday. According to DNA, Sandeep Sipa, the second accused, is the driver of the main accused in the case. [caption id=“attachment_2746080” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Representational image. AP[/caption] Gurinder, the main accused, had surrendered before a court in Muktsar on Saturday. He was caught abducting the woman on a CCTV camera installed in a nearby shop in Malout in Muktsar. Muktsar’s SSP Gurpreet Singh Gill had said on Saturday that the accused youth surrendered before a court in Muktsar and has been remanded to police custody for three days. The woman, a Dalit, was dragged by the youth from a computer centre in Malout in Muktsar. The CCTV footage showed the accused forcibly dragging the woman, said to be in her early 20s, out of her office in broad daylight on 25 March. The woman was seen struggling to break free from her alleged abductor, identified as Gurinder, aged around 25. After abducting her, Gurinder took her to Tapa Khera village in Muktsar district and allegedly raped her. The SSP said that about five days after the incident, the woman had got an FIR registered in the case after which the police were on a lookout for the accused. A case had been registered against the accused under various provisions of the law including for abduction and rape against the accused, he said. Both the accused, who is into farming, and the victim, hail from same village in Muktsar district. “He surrendered before a court at Muktsar yesterday and subsequently we took him on remand,” Gill had told PTI over phone on Saturday. With inputs from PTI