In an incident that happened a fortnight ago, seven people allegedly gangraped a 34-year-old married woman and a mother of two children, at Chhani in Vadodara. The details of incident came to light when the victim lodged a complaint at the Chhani police station on Wednesday.
According to police sources, the victim, a resident of Unda falia at Chhani, stays with her husband and two children, a son and a daughter. On that fateful day, 15 days ago, she had gone to the old well of the village to throw garbage in the afternoon and her husband was in his farm while the children were at school. Paresh, a resident of the same village accosted her at knifepoint and forced her to accompany him and two other people, namely, Ranjit and Shailesh.
The trio took the victim to a nearby house of Nayna Gandhi, another resident of the same village, where four more people joined the trio to rape the victim, an ordeal that lasted for around two hours. The seven rapists had also allegedly taken indecent pictures of the victim.
The victim who by then had fainted, was also threatened by two of the rapists, Paresh and Shailesh, of dire consequences if she divulged about the incident to anyone, after she had regained consciousness. They also blackmailed her of revealing her pictures if she dares to inform anyone about it.
The victim, thus, remained silent, until, Nayna Gandhi who had helped the rapists by providing her house, went to the victim’s place on Tuesday. Gandhi told the victim that Paresh, one of the accused, has called her. The enraged victim then started biting Gandhi and in the ensuing melee people crowded her house. The victim then revealed about the entire ordeal and the horrendous rape incident to the crowd, which immediately started searching for the rapists. They caught one of the rapists, Pratik, who too was bitten by the crowd. However, the other rapists including Dhaval and Paresh made good their escape.
ZA Thakore, PI of Chhani police station filed a case against eight people including the seven rapists and another man and a woman who had allegedly helped the accused. The accused are Paresh, Dipak, Shailesh Shah, Ranjit, Pratik, Dhaval Patel, Hasmukh Patel, Vipul Patel and Nayna Gandhi.
