Rohtak gangrape and murder: Haryana police arrest 8 suspects

Rohtak: Under attack over handling of the gangrape-murder case of a mentally challenged woman from Nepal, Haryana Police on Monday arrested eight youths in Rohtak and promised action in case of any lapse by its personnel. The opposition Congress latched on to the incident, which came to light on 4 February, to target the BJP government in the state on the law and order situation, saying it was “yet to wake up from the slumber”, and demanded reconstitution of SIT under an inspector general-level officer to go into the horrific incident. [caption id=“attachment_2089091” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Students in Rohtak protests against the gruesome gangrape. PTI[/caption] DGP Yashpal Singhal, who visited the crime spot, told that the arrested accused are in their twenties and appear to be criminals. “The case has been cracked and eight youths out of total nine have been arrested from Gaddikhera village, some 9 km from Rohtak,” he said. In a grim reminder of the 16 December gangrape in Delhi, a 28-year-old woman with learning difficulties from Nepal was brutally raped and murdered, and her body dumped in a field at a village on the Rohtak-Hisar highway here. The woman had been brutally assaulted as the post-mortem report mentions several injuries on her private parts. Stones and blades were found in her stomach. The victim had been residing with her sister for the past three months and was undergoing treatment at the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Sciences (PGIMS) in Rohtak. The victim’s sister had lodged a complaint with police on 1 February and on 4 February the woman’s body was found from the fields in Akbarpur village with several injury marks on it, Rohtak superintendent of police Shashank Anand had said. On the issue of alleged police apathy, the DGP said they swung into action the moment the complaint was lodged and a DSP rank officer is himself working on it. “If, however, any lapse on the part of police officials is found, action will be taken as per law against them,” the DGP said. After the details of the crime surfaced, opposition Congress, including former chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, CLP leader Kiran Choudhary and AICC spokesman Randeep Singh Surjewala had strongly deplored the incident and accused the Manohar Lal Khattar dispensation of lawlessness in the state. Surjewala alleged that while Haryana BJP government had spent lakhs of rupees on “Beti Bachao Yojana”, chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar and his ministers had not found time to even visit the victim’s family so far. PTI