Woman gang-raped & filmed in Bengaluru

Bengaluru: Posing as cops, two ex-convicts allegedly gang-raped a 25-year-old woman in front of her helpless husband and motherin-law in Bengaluru while their accomplices recorded the act on their mobile phones.

The four-member gang also robbed cash and jewellery, and threatened to release the video on the Internet if the family approached the police. Later, the men circulated the video clip among their friends using mobile messaging apps.

The incident took place on October 24 at the victim's residence in HSR Layout, close to the Bangalore Central Jail where all the four accused had served jail term on separate occasions. V. Nandish, C. Anil Kumar, C. Sujit Kumar and C. Simon - all in their early 20s - were nabbed by the police recently on the basis of information provided by the victim.

It took some time for the family to overcome the stigma of the incident before reporting the ordeal to the police. Two days after reporting the robbery, the victim mustered courage and approached the police with the complete version of the incident.

The police were shocked to hear about the incident because two other similar cases were recently reported from HSR Layout wherein miscreants had barged into homes and raped two housewives.

The four accused had also committed burglaries in the same locality. They would often gain entry into houses by posing as policemen. "In another incident, this gang had gatecrashed a party and molested three girls. They had also assaulted a businessman in the locality," a police officer said.

According to the police, the gang knocked on the doors of the victim's house just before midnight on October 24. The gang told the victim's husband that they were cops in civilian clothes to investigate drug sales by their neighbour. As the unsuspecting husband opened the door, they brandished knives and got hold of the mobile phones of the family members.

The victim, her baby and motherin-law were asleep when the gang entered the house. They tied all the family members with rope and gagged them. Two of the ex-convicts gang raped the woman while the two others recorded it on their phones. Later, the gang locked the doors from the outside and left with Rs.30,000 cash, gold jewellery and silverware.

The police tracked down the four accused to Chikkaballapura, a town near Bangalore, where they were trying to sell the jewellery. Investigators also found out that the accused had shared the video with their friends.