New Delhi: A
23-year-old woman was battling for life here Monday after a gang
of men tortured and raped her in a moving bus and threw her out on
the road along with her boyfriend, police said.
Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit expressed disgust over the
horrific incident even as police detained four suspects for the
overnight crime and hunted for other accomplices.
While the 28-year-old boyfriend was discharged after treatment,
the young woman, whose name is being withheld, was on ventilator
at the Safdarjung Hospital with life-threatening injuries.
"The patient is critical," hospital spokesman S.N. Makwana told
IANS.
Doctors said she had grave injuries on the stomach and intestine,
and she bore signs of having been beaten with a blunt object.
Police said the attack took place when the young couple reached
Munirka in south Delhi around 9.15 p.m. Sunday after watching a
movie at a mall in Saket and boarded a bus to go to Dwarka.
"Around seven men, including the driver and conductor, told the
couple they were headed to Dwarka," Deputy Commissioner of Police
Chhaya Sharma said.
The men misbehaved with the woman. When the boyfriend intervened,
he was beaten up, said Sharma. The woman was then raped in the
moving bus by four men.
"Of the seven, four men committed rape. We have prepared two
sketches of suspects," she said. The woman's ordeal lasted for
half hour.
Both victims were pushed out of the bus at Mahipalpur in south
Delhi at around 10.30 p.m. after their mobile phones were
snatched.
A police vehicle rushed them to hospital after being tipped off by
a toll plaza patrol that a young man and a young woman were lying
sprawled by the roadside, Sharma said.
D.K. Mishra, the anguished uncle of the young man, said five to
six men attacked the two.
"When my nephew tried to save the girl, he was beaten with iron
rods," he said. "The girl was then gang-raped."
The young woman, who belongs to Ballia in Uttar Pradesh, was
interning at a hospital here for some months. She lives in Mahavir
Enclave in west Delhi.
Her friend hails from Gorakhpur in Uttar Pradesh and lives in Ber
Sarai in south Delhi. He had completed his B.Tech from Meerut and
was preparing for civil services examination.
Sharma said CCTV footage of the bus was seized from a toll plaza
in Gurgaon.
"A case of kidnapping, robbery and rape has been registered," she
added. "Over 50 buses have been checked till now."
Chief Minister Dikshit pledged "strict action" against the
attackers.
Education and Social Welfare Minister Kiran Walia said: "It is a
shocking incident."
Mamta Sharma, chairperson of the National Commission for Women,
was aghast. "If an incident like this can take place in a thickly
populated area like Munirka, it shows the police are not alert."
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