Chandigarh: Vikas Barala, son of Haryana BJP chief Subhash Barala, and another person accused of stalking an IAS officer’s daughter were put behind bars on Wednesday after the Chandigarh police slapped a charge of attempted abduction against them.
This is the second time, Vikas, 23, and his co-accused Ashish Kumar, 27, have been arrested in the case which has triggered a massive furore and brought the issue of women’s safety on national centre stage.
On a day of fast paced developments, the Chandigarh police grilled the accused for nearly three hours and then decided to add the non-bailable charge of “attempt of abduction” under section 365 and 511 of the IPC after claiming to have found “new facts and evidences” in the case.
Both the accused will be produced before the court on Thursday, DGP, Chandigarh, Tejinder Singh Luthra told mediapersons here.
Varnika Kundu, the gutsy 29-year-old, who was allegedly stalked, expressed satisfaction terming the fresh arrest as a “great development in the case”.
“If we continue this movement, cases like these will get a lot rarer,” she asserted. Her father, senior IAS officer Virender Kundu said the arrest was “one small step in the right direction” adding that the accused should be punished appropriately.
The re-arrest of the two men, said to be law graduates, came after they appeared before the police in the afternoon following summons issued to them.
The police also got the two medically examined at a government hospital here. Last Saturday, the two had been arrested on Varnika's complaint but were released later on bail as they were booked under bailable sections of the IPC and the Motor Vehicles Act.
The stalking incident came to light when Ms Varnika had called up the police late on Friday night, complaining that two youth were chasing her along a stretch of over five kilometre from Chandigarh right up to a point in the Union Territory, adjoining Haryana’s border.
Notably, Ms Varnika in her complaint had mentioned that there was an attempt to abduct her by the accused. “To me it was very clear that that these boys intended to abduct me even tried to open the door (of the car),” the victim had said in her complaint.
