"We knew she would not complain.'' That is what one of the accused, 32-year-old Satish, said when asked by the police if he did not feel scared that the victim - a software professional in an IT firm in Cyberabad - would complain that he and his accomplice raped her and that he could meet the fate of Delhi gangrape victim Jyoti's rapists.
Ironically, he was right. The girl in fact cooked up a story and did not reveal that she had been raped till more than 24 hours later. In fact, her original version was that she had been abducted by the two accused drivers - Satish and 28-year-old Venkateswarulu - and they had let her off once she raised the alarm.
The techie after finishing her shopping at a mall in Cyberabad at around 730 pm on Thursday evening, had boarded a bus to get to another part of Cyberabad. There at 845 pm, while waiting for a bus to go back to her hostel, this car with its two inmates offered to drop her for 50 rupees. She haggled to make it 40 rupees and got into the car. Instead of taking her to the hostel, they took her to the forests in the adjoining Medak district and raped her in the car.
Two hours into the journey gone horribly wrong, at around 10:50 pm, she tried calling up her Bangalore-based boyfriend but her phone was snatched away. Sensing something was wrong, her boyfriend called up his friends in Hyderabad and asked them to lodge a complaint with the police. Even as the cops started the search, the girl was dropped off at her hostel at 1:45 am.
The girl did not reveal to her boyfriend or the police that she had been raped. But the cops were suspicious having seen blood marks on her clothes. "She had spent five hours with the two men. Seeing the circumstantial evidence, it could not have been anything but rape,'' said C.V. Anand, the Commissioner of Cyberabad Police.
It was only the next evening that she came out with the truth. The police then sought video footage from Birla school which is enroute the area that the car passed by that night. CCTV footage revealed that the car had passed in front of the school just after midnight. "But since the footage was very grainy, we took the help of the National Investigation Agency to identify the model of the car and finally traced the Volvo car in which the two had kidnapped and raped the girl,'' said Anand.
In fact, since the number plate was not clearly visible, the police had to physically verify all the 77 Volvo S60 models in Hyderabad. It is a high end car that costs Rs.40 lakh and had been leased by a businessman from a travel agency. Since the owner was out of station, the duo had decided to use the vehicle to commit the crime.
The girl, who the police call "Abhaya" to maintain her confidentiality, is scared and shaken. The police has asked the media to keep off the story, lest "we see her dead". "She does not want her parents to know about it because she fears they will commit suicide," said Anand.
A medical examination confirmed rape, following which the drivers were booked on charges of kidnapping, gangrape, criminal intimidation and illegal confinement.
Clinical psychiatrist Dr Purnima Nagaraja says in ten out of ten cases, women do not report rape in India. "In fact, it is only one in a thousand where the victim goes public with the crime," she says. "They are scared about their future, what their parents or husband will think and do not want the undue publicity that it will attract." Obviously, this only emboldens the rapists on the prowl.
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