Nine arrested for gangrape of teen girl in Varanasi

Varanasi: Pandeypur Lalpur police arrested nine accused in the case of a 19 years old girl getting raped by 23 men over one week, on Tuesday. Investigators were also probing role of the nine arrested persons, who came under lens in 2022 on charges of operating a sex racket in the name of a spa centre.
ACP Cantt Vidush Saxena said on Tuesday that Raj Vishwakarma (20) of Sir Karahiya, Ayush Dhoosia (19) of Naibasti Hukulganj, Sajid (19) of Badshahbagh, Suhail Sheikh (20) of Hukulganj, Danish Ali (20) of Lalpur, Imran Ahmed (19) of Lullapura, Shabbir Alam alias Sameer Ahmed (21) of Bara Chakra, Sohail Khan (20) of Englishia Line and Anmol Gupta (28) of Mirapur Basahi, were arrested in connection with the gang rape case so far. They were all produced before the court and sent to jail, he added.
Earlier, at PDDU district hospital, some locals tried to assault one of the accused and police tightened security when the accused were being boarded into a van following a medical test.
Officials said search for the remaining accused, including three identified and 11 unidentified individuals, is continuing. The accused arrested so far are businessmen, staff of shops or hotels and students. One of them operates a hookah bar in the Sigra area and is suspected to be leader of the sex racket. He was charged with running a sex racket in 2022 too and further investigation was in progress, said officials.
Teams engaged by officials worked hard by checking footage from the CCTV network at over 30 locations in the Sigra, Cantt, Lanka and Pandeypur Lalpur police station areas. It came to light in the investigation that the survivor was drugged repeatedly and subjected to continuous physical abuse. It is also suspected that the girl was taken to a spa centre as a guest, but on reaching there, she was forced into prostitution under the pretext of a massage. Her father kept claiming that when she returned home, she was in a state of intoxication and remained disoriented for two days.