Nagpur, Oct 5, 2020-
Lacking faith in the Uttar Pradesh Police, a distraught 22-year-old Nepali woman escaped the clutches of her alleged kidnapper-cum-rapist in Lucknow, cabbed down 900-km to Nagpur and lodged a police complaint against him, a senior official said here on Monday.
The victim’s horror-story moved the Maharashtra Police to immediately register a ‘Zero FIR’ and send the victim with a woman police escort to Lucknow to complete the necessary formalities, later on Monday.
Koradi Police Station’s Senior Police Inspector Vazeer Shaikh said that the victim came from Kathmandu in 2018 and is high-school educated and has been working in the event management field in Noida in Uttar Pradesh.
“After working in Noida for six months, a friend Sufi Vishwakarma lured her to Surat (Gujarat) for six months with better job prospects. There, Sufi introduced her to a ‘rakhi brother’ Praveen J. Yadav, 25, working as a software engineer in Dubai,” Shaikh told IANS of the girl’s plight.
At the height of lockdown, as things took a downturn in Surat, in March, Sufi took the victim to Lucknow to live in her rented flat in Semra.
“After working for such a long time in India, the victim had saved around Rs 1.50 lakh which she had entrusted with Sufi, to transfer for her minor step-sister’s education in Nepal. In mid-September, she asked Sufi to return the money, but the latter refused, fought with her, assaulted her, grabbed her passport and threw her out of the house,” Shaikh said.
Crying and helpless in a strange city, she called up Yadav in Dubai to narrate her plight and he booked a room in Trans Hotel, nearby, as she remained blissfully unaware of what was in store.
“Shortly afterwards, the accused Yadav flew down from Dubai and moved in with her in the hotel room and repeatedly raped her for three days. Then, he took her to a friend’s home in the vicinity, confined her there and continued to rape her for another week,” Shaikh said, quoting from the Zero FIR.
He took videos, photos, hacked her Facebook and Instagram passwords and posted them to her family, relatives and friends. Her shocked family promptly ‘disowned her’, the police officer added.
At her wit’s end, she threatened Yadav with a police complaint, but he retorted claiming to be “a don, and the local police in my pocket”.
Such was Yadav’s arrogance on his purported influence that he even called a local policeman to whom the victim narrated her tragic story, but the cop flatly refused to help, saying “its your personal matter”.
The victim told Maharashtra Police that losing all hope for justice from UP Police, she pretended to go out to meet a friend in Ahmedabad for a few days and return to Lucknow, since Sufi and Yadav had already seized her passport.
The duo reluctantly relented and the emboldened victim quietly called a Nepali friend in Nagpur, Mandira Anup Mishra, to recount her grim tale, and sought her help.
“The Mishra couple readily agreed and Anup Mishra, a hotelier, booked an Ola cab for her direct from Lucknow to Nagpur, around 900-km on September 29 and she reached here the next day,” Shaikh said.
In a daze after her nightmare in Lucknow, she consulted several people, including lawyers and finally approached the Koradi Police.
“We counselled her, explained her legal rights, and lodged a Zero FIR on October 3. On Sunday, we sent a two-member police team by cab to Lucknow for the other formalities and they will again bring her back to Nagpur,” Shaikh said, assuring she will not be left to face any risks in Uttar Pradesh.
In Lucknow, the local police is expected to make a ‘panchnama’ of the three locations, carry out the victim’s medical, trace the two accused named by her (Sufi and Yadav), lodge a full FIR and start investigations.
Nagpur Police Commissioner Amitesh Kumar has lauded the prompt action by Koradi Police officers to help the distressed victim in her quest for justice.
The Nagpur police probe revealed that Yadav — a graduate of Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam Technical University, Lucknow — was nabbed in an arms case recently and the case verdict is likely to come on Monday at the court of Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Gagandeep Singh. (Agency)
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