A major criminal case has been registered in Karnataka after a 22-year-old woman filed a complaint with the Yadgir Women Police Station after she was rescued by emergency response workers.
The accused have been booked under different provisions of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), and the investigation is ongoing to know the entire sequence of events and to determine the role played by each accused person, said a police officer.
According to the police, the woman had travelled from Bengaluru to Yadgir by train and had been worried about her personal and family problems. According to investigators, as she sat in a waiting room at Yadgir Railway Station in the early hours of the morning, Mallu (alias Mallappa) approached and offered her help.
Police said that the accused had established her trust by promising marriage and took her to a house he claimed belonged to his relatives near the railway station and sexually assaulted her there. Sharanappa and another unidentified railway police officer, who was also at the spot, also arrived and threatened and assaulted her there, the complaint said.
Police said that after the woman was left at the railway station, another accused, Mahesh, approached her and said he had been sent by Mallappa to take her to a lodge near the new bus stand and sexually assaulted her after threatening to take her to the hospital. Later on, investigators said the woman travelled to Kalaburagi, but the trouble continued.
Mallappa had contacted her again about a month later, and he had promised to marry her, as per the complaint that was filed with the police, which stated. Under the pretext of the preparation of marriage documents, he took her to Shahapur and again sexually assaulted her at a lodge, the complaint said.
And according to the complaint, when the woman returned to Yadgir Railway Station to go back home in the afternoon, she had three other people, Ramesh, Pappu, and Harsha alias Sudhakar, who had been arrested.
Police said that Harsha and Ramesh took her away in a car and assaulted her in a secluded place; they also gave her money to return to Bengaluru. The woman later returned to Kalaburagi after getting employment and marriage after being promised, they said. She was then locked up in a room for two days and was beaten and threatened again, she added.
The case became more serious when the woman managed to get out of Aland and travel to Shahapur on a bus. On the way, she was crying, and a fellow passenger saw she was in distress and immediately alerted the 112 emergency response service. Emergency workers intercepted the bus, saved her, and took her to Shakti Sadan, a government-run women’s shelter in Yadgir. After counselling and support from officials at the shelter, she narrated the events she had been through and filed an official complaint. This was the basis of the criminal case that is being investigated by the police now.
Police officials said that a full investigation is going on and that teams have been formed to track and find all the accused people. The railway staff allegations are also under investigation, and that could be more of a focus because of their position. Based on the evidence collected in the investigation, the accused persons and the complainant will be identified, police said. One of the reasons for this case is that women are scared of being taken advantage of and that the suspects are not being well protected.
