Bhopal: The police in Satna in Madhya Pradesh was late on Wednesday evening left shell-shocked when a 20-year-old Dalit woman produced a 5-month-old foetus before them as a testimony to her ordeal of being gang-raped for months and then forcibly aborted by local youths. The woman along with her mother approached Satna district superintendent of police (SP) Rajesh Hingankar carrying the foetus, prompting the SP to constitute a committee to probe the matter.
“Cases under rape, kidnapping, criminal intimidation, SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, Arms Act and other relevant sections of Indian Penal Code (IPC) have been registered against the accused”, Mr Hingankar said. According to the complaint, the accused Neeraj Pandey and his brother Dheeraj raped her repeatedly for months. Later, Neeraj promised to marry her, but backed out. They abducted her on February 2 and raped her for a fortnight. On Tuesday, Neeraj, Dheeraj, Prem Singh and Raj Kumar had forcibly taken her and her mother to a local clinic where her foetus was aborted. She said she was forced to approach the SP when local police officials refused to file an FIR.
