A shocker of an incident has come to light in Tamil Nadu’s Trichy district where a girl studying Class 11 was given liquor and gang-raped by five men multiple times.
Ranganathan (33), from Antharapatti near Musiri in Trichy district, had lured a 16-year-old school girl from the same area into a relationship. He is said to have indulged in sexual acts when she was alone at her home.
He had also introduced her to his friends Manikandan (23) and Ganesan (28) from Sirugambur village.
Pretending to love her, he took her alone to the shrubs on the banks of the Cauvery River in April and made her drink soft drinks spiked with alcohol, rendering her unconscious.
Later, he called five of his friends from Sirugambur, including Manikandan and Ganesan. They all sexually assaulted the girl and recorded the act on their cell phones.
They threatened her of releasing the video if she tried to tell anyone about the sexual assault. They also raped her three times after the April incident.
Meanwhile the girl’s relatives had complained to her parents that she was roaming around with men. After noticing changes in her behavior, her parents decided to discontinue her studies and marry her to a person from Trichy in May.
When child rights activists and the District Social Welfare Officer learned of the school girl’s marriage, they filed a complaint with the Jeeyapuram police station, who rescued her and lodged her in a children’s home in Trichy.
An enraged Ranganathan meanwhile released the sexual videos in social media. The video of the school girl being gang-raped by five men was released while she was at the Trichy children’s home. Authorities at the home who came to know about the video enquired her. The girl admitted that she was gang-raped by the five men.
The parents were shocked to learn of the school girl’s video being circulated on the internet. The girl narrated the entire ordeal following which her parents filed a complaint at Musiri All Women Police Station.
Police investigated the complaint and found that the video was shared by one of the five assaulters in the video following a disagreement among themselves. A case has been registed under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act.
All five culprits – Ranganthan, Manikandan, Ganesan, Dinesh and Saran – have been arrested by the police.
(With inputs from ABP Nadu)
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