A 26-year-old woman was allegedly gang-raped and tortured in Rajasthan’s Kanota area of Jaipur on May 21. Police have booked all the five accused.

Three of the accused have been identified as Dr Anurag, Deepesh Chaturvedi, Kapil Sharma, and two others are yet to be identified and arrested.

The Incident

According to the victim’s preliminary statement, her trauma began last year after she filed a complaint against one Kapil Sharma for alleged molestation.

“Around the same time when she filed the case, she came in contact with Deepesh, who had introduced himself to her as the vice president of the human rights commission. Deepesh had taken Rs 45,000 from her to expedite her case against Kapil,” The Times of India quoted a police officer as saying.

The survivor soon learnt that Deepesh had duped her, and visited his place to confront him and demand the money back. At Deepesh’s home, he allegedly hit her on the head and she fell unconscious.

She woke up to find the five accused, two of whom she did not identify, surrounding her. They then raped and tortured her for hours, before dumping her at the Kanota jungle.

Later, the survivor, who was dumped semi-naked, managed to come on to the road and go to the police station. She was allegedly burnt with cigarettes and her private parts were mutilated.

A special team formed will probe the matter further.

Rise In Incidents Of Rape In Rajasthan

In the last few days in May, multiple reports of women and girls being raped in Rajasthan have emerged. Three juveniles raped a minor girl in Alwar on May 14, following which the survivor’s family lynched one of the accused. Just a few days before this, a group of five men allegedly thrashed and gang-raped a woman in front of her husband near Thanagazi in Rajasthan’s Alwar district.

In the last few days, an eight-year-old girl was raped in Dholpur and a six-year-old girl was allegedly raped by her relative in Churu.

While a woman was gang-raped by seven men in Jhalawar’s Ratlai village, a minor girl was raped at her home in Bharatpur. On May 7, a Dalit woman was raped by two men at a hospital in Kathoomar.

Data from the Rajasthan Police website shows that 3,305 cases of rape were registered in 2017. In just one year, an increase of 1,030 cases took the number of registered rape cases to 4,335 in 2018. This year, until April 2019, a total of 1,509 rape cases were reported. This figure rose from 1,312 in the same period last year. While the number of rape cases registered in Rajasthan in 2015 was 3,644, 3,656 rape cases were registered by the state police in 2016.

On May 17, the Rajasthan government took suo motu cognisance of rising rape incidents in Bharatpur and Jhalawar districts, and also issued a notice to the state government, asking for a reply by May 27. A Division Bench of Justices Sandeep Mehta and Vinit Kumar Mathur expressed concern over the rise in such cases and said that the police and the administration have failed to take proper steps to curb these incidents.

“It appears that the administration and the police have turned incapable. There are reports of rape one after another in the State. It is a matter of huge concern,” The Hindu quoted the Bench as commenting.

Some of these incidents were also politicised, with political parties blaming each other for the condition of women in Rajasthan. What Rajasthan and the entire country wants, is that the administration and the police take timely and befitting steps to curb crimes.

Also Read: Rajasthan: Three Minors Allegedly Rape 15-Year-Old Girl; Girl’s Family Lynches One Accused