UP: 4 women ‘gang-raped’, man trying to save family shot dead off #Yamunaexpressway near #Bulandshahr
A gang of highway robbers allegedly dragged and raped four women in a field for hours and shot dead a male relative trying to save them off the Yamuna Expressway in Uttar Pradesh’s Gautam Budh Nagar early on Thursday, police said.
Eight members of a family were travelling to Bulandshahr from Greater Noida when they were waylaid by the gang about 1.30am. The six looted cash and valuables from the family and then raped the women, the victims alleged. When the man tried to resist, he was shot dead.
“It’s a heinous crime. An FIR has been registered. A man has been murdered. Four women have alleged gang rape. Police teams are working on the case,” said Love Kumar, senior superintendent of Gautam Budh Nagar. “The women are being taken for medical examination. The post-mortem is being done. Two other teams are hunting for the suspects.”
Police said the robbers dragged the women to the field and raped them for hours. Their medical examination is on and two teams of policemen are on the lookout for six suspects.
Last July, a mother and her 13-year-old daughter were waylaid and raped by a group of highway robbers also in Bulandshahr. A Noida-based family of five was headed to Shahjahanpur when miscreants attacked them about 1.30 am on the Ghaziabad-Aligarh highway at Dostpur village, near Bulandshahr.
The incident sparked a political slugfest ahead of the assembly elections and had brought under focus India’s largest state’s notorious reputation of being unsafe for women. The BJP swept to power two months ago on a promise of tighter law and order.
Uttar Pradesh has the longest network of highways among all states, according to National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) data. National Crime Records Bureau’s data for 2014 show the state also accounts for the highest number of highway crimes – 80% of the 84,000 cases of dacoity and thefts on highways across the country were recorded in Uttar Pradesh.
“The victim’s family is from Jewar. They were travelling in Eeco car and going to Bulandshahr. The criminals threw something on the tyre and it got punctured. However, the driver of the car didn’t stop and drove for quite a distance and stopped near a hut,” Jewar MLA Thakur Dhirendra Singh said.
“As soon as they got down from the car, six criminals took the family to the fields and started looting cash and valuables and assaulting the women,” he said. There were three men in the car, along with four women and one child. The injured have been admitted in a local hospital in Jewar.
