Lucknow, July 20: Three young men accused of gang-raping a minor Dalit girl while filming the act and uploading the video on the social media will have the National Security Act invoked against them to pre-empt bail, Uttar Pradesh police said today.
Relatives of the 15-year-old girl have accused the local Kolhui police station of trying to suppress the alleged crime, which they say took place in a forest near village Terhi in Maharajganj district, 360km east of Lucknow, on June 15.
But zonal police bosses took cognisance of the matter yesterday hours after the nine-minute video went viral on WhatsApp, and sent the girl for a medical examination.
The National Security Act (NSA) allows the Centre and state governments to put anyone in preventive detention for periods of 12 months, with the possibility of further extensions, for reasons ranging from national security to public order.
Although the three suspects have already been accused of gang rape, a senior officer said the NSA would be invoked to prevent them from repeating the alleged act. It's possible for detention under NSA to continue, with a judicial committee's approval, even if an accused is acquitted, a senior lawyer said.
Brijesh Yadav and Somnath Yadav were arrested today and charged with gang rape - which can bring life imprisonment for adult convicts - sexual assault of a child, atrocities against a Dalit, and violation of the Information Technology Act.
Officers, who claim to have identified all three from the video, said the third suspect, Fulej Yadav, was in hiding. All three belong to the adjoining village of Pipariyan.
Police sources said the girl was a Class XI pupil and so was Brijesh. Somnath is enrolled in BA first year while Fulej is a school dropout, they added.
Family members of the girl say they contacted Kolhui police on June 16 but the cops tried to coerce them into striking a deal with the families of the accused for Rs 37,000.
"The policemen forced me to change the complaint from gang rape to molestation. The families of the accused offered us Rs 37,000 at the police station, and the cops asked us to accept the money and forget the incident," a cousin of the girl told reporters today.
"We refused and returned home. But policemen kept visiting our home every day to mount pressure on her (the girl) to accept the money and forget the ordeal."
Kolhui station house officer Satyendra Bahadur Singh refused to answer reporters' questions about the allegations, saying a probe was on.
Mohit Agrawal, inspector-general of police, Gorakhpur zone, told reporters that any policeman who had tried to suppress the case would be punished.
"Two crime branch teams are probing the case," said Ashutosh Shukla, additional superintendent of police, Maharajganj.
He said the girl had come to her maternal uncle's home in Terhi and entered the forest with a friend.
Police sources said the accused had spotted the girl and the boy sitting in the forest, thrashed the couple with rods, gang-raped the girl and filmed the incident with a mobile phone camera.
"We are going to take action against them under the NSA," Agrawal said.
Describing how the NSA works, high court lawyer A.P. Ojha said the police first write to the district magistrate, who is authorised to invoke the act.
"Later, a committee of three high court judges decides whether the district magistrate's decision was correct," he said. It's up to the committee to endorse or reject any extension beyond 12 months.
The NSA and other laws that allow preventive detention have been criticised widely for alleged misuse, while some have questioned the act's constitutional validity.
Uttar Pradesh police have already invoked the NSA against 14 young men arrested on the charges of gang-raping two women in a forest in Rampur district in May and uploading the video on the social media.
