Mumbai: Friend bound, Virar woman gang-raped

The Virar police have arrested two men after they assaulted a 20yearold woman and her friend whom they had spotted chitchatting alone on a hillock near Jivdani temple on Wednesday evening The duo tied up the man then took the woman to a secluded place and raped her cops said on Thursday The accused had first extorted money from them threatening to post their photos on social media the police saidThe alleged incident happened near Jivdani temple in Virar on Wednesday evening PicsHanif PatelThe police have identified the accused as Dheeraj Rajesh Soni 25 and Yash Laxman Shinde 22 both residents of nearby Sainath Nagar in Virar East They are school dropouts said a cop ldquoThe man and the woman were chitchatting at a secluded place on the hillock when two men carrying beer bottles arrived there The accused first clicked their photographs and then demanded money from them threatening to share their photos on social mediardquo said an officerAlso Read Mumbai Crime Branch arrests two from Uttarakhand in 16yearold murder caseExtortionldquoSince the victims did not have enough cash on them the man contacted his friend and asked to transfer Rs 500 to the accusedrdquo the officer added Yet the accused misbehaved with the woman and tried to pull her away The man in his early 20s picked up a beer bottle and smashed it on Sonirsquos head ldquoBoth the accused then overpowered the man undressed him tied his hands using his own belt and carried the woman on their shoulders down the hillock while she screamed for helprdquo said the officerA beer bottle found at the crime sceneThe man somehow managed to untie himself and ran down the hillock asking passersby for a mobile phone to call for help However ldquoas he was naked people mistook him for a mentally ill personrdquo said an officer from Virar police station One local resident realised that he was probably in need of help and alerted the Virar police Cops arrived at the spot consoled him covered his body with a piece of cloth and took him to the police station where he told them of the crimeCaught at a clinicCops immediately informed their senior officers in the Mira Bhayandar Vasai Virar MBVV police and began working to trace the woman ldquoHe the friend was unaware of the womanrsquos whereabouts Also her mobile number was switched offrdquo said an officer Rajendra Kamble senior inspector Virar police station said ldquoAs one of the men was injured I immediately contacted a few clinics hospitals and doctors to find out if anyone had come for treatment A doctor informed me that a patient with head injuries was at his clinic I requested the doctor to send a photograph of the patientrdquoVirar police station where the case was filedMeanwhile a team of police had gone to the womanrsquos house and found her there Cops convinced her to accompany them to Virar police station for an FIR She told them the accused took her to an isolated place and took turns to rape her ldquoThey then burned the survivorrsquos handbag and fled with her mobile phone abandoning her in the junglerdquo said the police Traumatised she could not muster the courage to return to the spot where her friend was tied up and walked to her home instead said a coplsquoDuo nabbed in 2 hoursrsquoAfter they identified Soni through the photo sent by the doctor cops nabbed him at the clinic and later apprehended Shinde too ldquoBoth the accused were arrested within two hours of the matter being reported to us Our priority was to first locate the womanrdquo Kamble saidThe spot of the crime in VirarBoth the victims were taken for medical checkup and a team of cops went to the crime scene to collect evidence They gathered shards of a beer bottle and blood samples for forensic analysisldquoWe have booked both the accused for gang rape kidnapping and extortionrdquo Kamble said They were on Thursday produced before a court which remanded them in police custody until March 27 Further investigation is underway said the police2No of hours it took cops to nab accused