When a lovestruck 14-year-old girl decided to run away from home to meet her boyfriend, she had no inkling of the horror she was in for. The girl, from Kolkata's Dum Dum locality, was raped several times by two Indian Army jawans on a train to Amritsar.
It all started with Facebook - initially by sending friend requests to each other, followed by messages and then late night chats. For the minor girl, that was perhaps enough to fall in love with a boy who actually hailed from Punjab's Ludhiana district.
On Sunday morning the girl decided to run away from home to meet the boy in Ludhiana. She came to Howrah station and boarded the Punjab-bound Howrah-Amritsar Express that departed at 1.50 pm. As all other compartments were full, she picked a comparatively less crowded compartment reserved for Indian Army jawans only.
Over the next few hours on the train, one of the jawans in the compartment got the girl drunk and then two others raped her when she went to the bathroom. The horrific ordeal went on till she was rescued in a joint effort by the Railway Protection Force (RPF) and the Government Railway Police (GRP) personnel at Madhupur station in Jharkhand around 8 pm on Sunday. Her family had informed the police who alerted railway authorities.
Accordingly, the officials at Howrah station identified the girl and captured her image from CCTV footage. Sources said by then the train had already crossed into Jharkhand. The DGP's Ranchi office was alerted and the girl's photograph was faxed to GRP officials at Jasidih at around 6 pm with an order to rescue her.
Permission was sought from the railways to detain it for seven minutes at Madhupur where GRP and RPF personnel started a coach-by-coach search. She was found unconscious when the train was stopped at Madhupur and social workers said that she was in traumatised state and urgently needs counselling.
An Army jawan, identified as Manjrish Tripathi who had reportedly offered liquor to the minor, was arrested by the Jharkhand Government Railway Police (GRP). The girl was taken to Howrah GRP and the accused jawan was handed over on Tuesday.
"During investigation the girl told us that she was fleeing to Ludhiana and was gangraped as many as six times by two army personnel. We have held one jawan -Manjrish Tripathi of RT Battalion 72, Eastern Command from the train. He has been booked for supporting others in the crime," Madhupur station GRP OC Arjun Tiwari told reporters here.
A medical examination had confirmed rape. Prima facie, it seemed the allegations were correct. He said that besides the Howrah GRP, they would also investigate the matter separately.
The victim has already identified the two rapists from a video footage of the coach but when sleuths boarded the train at Sultanpur around noon on Monday to arrest the accused, they were nowhere to be found. According to Tiwari, two accused have been identified and interrogation of the arrested person (Tripathi) is likely to provide further leads in the case.
Meanwhile, the arrested jawan was produced in the chief judicial magistrate court in Howrah district on Tuesday.