Two men allegedly gang-raped a 25-year-old-woman near the Raj Nagar Extension in Ghaziabad when she was returning home from a hospital where works as a nurse, police said on Saturday.
Friday night’s incident is the latest sexual assault on women in the National Capital Region (NCR), where one rape case is reported every four hours.
Police said the woman was dragged into roadside bushes near the NH-58 when the two yet-to-be identified men allegedly took turns raping and assaulting her. They also snatched her mobile phone and filmed the assault.
The woman is admitted to a private hospital with injuries on face and other body parts.
“While on the way back home, she saw two men following her on the isolated road. She tried calling up her family but the call did not go through. The two unidentified men stopped following her when they saw her on the phone…Moments later, they reappeared and pulled her to nearby fields,” said RS Khoda, the station house officer of the Sihani Gate police station.
The incident took at around 10 pm place barely 200 metres from the locality where the woman lives. It was raining heavily when the assault took place, police added.
“She told that initially she thought that the two men were robbers and were trying to snatch her mobile. She handed over the mobile but one of them pulled her hair while the other slapped and punched her multiple times,” said an officer investigating the case.
“She said both were drunk and called each other with names while in a hurry to leave the scene of the crime. We picked up one person with similar name. He was a previous accused in a rape case. But the man was not identified by the victim,” the officer said.
Police sources said that the two men were aged around 22-23 years and unknown to the woman.
The incident also highlights police failure to secure an area where similar incidents have been reported in the past. In February last year, 24-year-old woman, then an executive with e-commerce firm Snapdeal, was allegedly abducted by five men from near the Hindon river and taken to the same isolated stretch near Raj Nagar Extension before taking her to Haryana. She was later released unharmed.
Ghaziabad police said several teams from the crime branch and special operation group have joined the investigations and in search for the accused.
