Emerging details of the Hyderabad rape case, in which a TRS leader’s son has been arrested among others, are jarring. A 17-year-old girl was raped in in an Innova vehicle on the evening of May 28 after the accused promised to drop her home from a pub in Jubilee Hills where the victim had attended a party.
The issue assumed political colour, with the opposition BJP alleging the involvement of ruling TRS and AIMIM leaders in the matter and taking exception to an alleged delay in arresting the accused. Raising slogans against the police and others, BJP activists held a dharna at the Jubilee Hills police station in the city, demanding expeditious action.
However, this is not the first time that VIPs or their closed ones have been booked or involved in gruesome rape cases. News18 takes a look at some:
Nadia Rape Case
A Class 9 student in Hanskhali, West Bengal, had gone for a birthday party hosted by the son of a Trinamool Congress (TMC) panchayat member Samarendra Gayali, Brajagopal, on April 4 and returned home, unwell. She died the following morning reportedly due to excessive bleeding and was cremated in the village crematorium without any post-mortem or death certificate.
On April 9, the girl’s family registered a complaint against the TMC leader’s son, following which Brajagopal was arrested and booked for rape, murder and tampering of evidence.
Political furor ignited in the state after the BJP claimed the TMC was shielding the accused. Even Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee invited flak for her comments on the victim, wondering if the minor girl had been ‘involved’ with someone or pregnant.
Brajagopal and four or five of his friends allegedly forced her to consume alcohol at the party and gang-raped her. The girl died the next morning as a result of excessive bleeding. Brajagopal allegedly threatened the victim’s father with “burning him alive” if he attempted to take his daughter to a doctor. “Braja Gayali did not allow us to lodge a complaint with the police, saying that if we tried to go there they would shoot us on the street,” the father said, according to reports. He claimed that the perpetrators of his daughter’s rape took her body from his home to the crematorium. Brajagopal, the main accused, was arrested on April 10.
“It was a small incident, which we do not like, but still takes place, and it is constantly being harped upon. The police do not yet know…. Are you going to call it rape or [was she] pregnant or a love affair?” Banerjee said on April 11.
The Calcutta High Court ordered the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to investigate the incident on April 12.
Chilling Unnao Rape Case
Expelled BJP MLA Kuldeep Singh Sengar was sentenced to life in prison in 2019 after being convicted of raping a 17-year-old girl in 2017.
The Unnao rape case made national headlines after a rape survivor attempted self-immolation outside UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath’s residence to protest alleged police inaction.
Shortly after the allegations against Kuldeep Sengar surfaced, the rape survivor’s father was arrested under the Arms Act. He died as a result of alleged torture while in police custody.
In July 2019, a truck rammed into the car the Unnao rape survivor was travelling in with other family members and her lawyer. She was on her way to see her uncle in Rae Bareli, Uttar Pradesh, from Unnao. The accident killed three people, including the lawyer. Because she was in critical condition, she was airlifted from a hospital in Lucknow to AIIMS.
In her statement to the CBI, the Unnao rape survivor claimed that former BJP MLA Kuldeep Singh Sengar was behind the accident because he wanted to kill her.
Kuldeep Sengar was sentenced to ten years in prison in March 2020 for the death of the rape victim’s father. However, a Delhi court discharged Kuldeep Singh Sengar from the murder case involving the Unnao rape survivor’s family’s accident.
Rajasthan Rape Case
In May this year, a 23-year-old woman claimed that Rajasthan Minister Mahesh Joshi’s son Rohit raped her on several occasions between January 8 last year and April 17 this year, and also promised to marry her, prompting the Delhi Police to file a zero First Information Report or zero FIR.
“During their first meeting, she alleged, he spiked her drink and when she woke up the next morning, he showed her naked photographs and videos which worried her,” read the FIR, according to reports.
The woman also claimed that on August 11, 2021, she discovered she was pregnant with his child and that Rohit Joshi forced her to take an abortion pill, which she refused.
In response to the allegations levelled against his son, Joshi stated, “I’ve already stated that I support the truth and justice. I follow the rules of the law. I will assist the Delhi police in their investigation if they come to me.”
Shocking Nalia Rape Case
When a woman filed a complaint at Naliya police station in Kutch district in January 2017, she claimed she had been gang-raped for more than a year by ten people, including four local BJP leaders. The woman, a native of Kutch but now residing in Mumbai, claimed in her complaint that Shantilal Solanki hired her for his LPG distribution agency in Naliya and sexually assaulted her after inviting her to his home and spiking her glass of soft drink.
According to the woman, Solanki’s friends Bharat Chauhan alias Bharat Darji and Vipul Thakkar, who were present at Solanki’s home at the time, later took turns raping her and filming the assault. Later, the accused allegedly blackmailed her and forced her into a sex racket, threatening to make public the video of her sexual assault if she approached police, according to a report by the Indian Express.
Police later identified the accused as Shantilal Solanki, then convenor of the BJP’s Abdasa taluka unit’s OBC (Other Backward Classes) cell; Govind Parumalani, a secretary in the BJP’s Gandhidham unit; and Vasant Bhanushali and Ajit Ramwani, BJP councillors in Gandhidham municipality. Babba Sheth alias Vinod Thakkar (67) and his 35-year-old son Chetan, Solanki’s tailor friend Chauhan of Naliya, and Ashwin Thakkar, a property dealer in Nakhtrana, Kutch, were the other accused.
The complainant later stated that she had been raped by only nine people. The BJP suspended four of its leaders, and all of the accused were apprehended by a special investigation team (SIT) formed by Kutch (west) police and overseen by the CID (crime).
Days after the gang-rape case was registered, a man of Abdasa taluka who claimed to be the former husband of the woman filed two complaints against her in Naliya court, accusing her of cheating and extortion as well as criminal intimidation. The court ordered two FIRs against the woman. A few months later, the 21-year-old woman filed an affidavit in Gujarat High Court stating that BJP Councillor Vasant Bhanushali had not raped her. The Opposition Congress stalled proceedings of the Assembly over the issue, forcing the state government to order a judicial inquiry into the incident.
Meanwhile, the victim became hostile during her deposition in the Bhuj sessions court last July, prompting the prosecutor to cross-examine her for three days. The Gujarat High Court later granted bail to three of the eight accused, while the remaining five were later released on bail by the Bhuj court. The prosecution is currently presenting evidence in the trial court in Bhuj.
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