A 16-year-old girl was gang-raped and pushed into a canal by two men in the Indian city of Khurja, roughly 55 miles southeast of Delhi. She survived by clinging to a tree branch until she was rescued.
The two men, who pushed the victim into the Upper Ganga Canal, were arrested on Thursday, police said. The girl's cries were heard on Wednesday in the early morning hours, and a resident feeding his cattle spotted her holding on to the branch at daybreak. He alerted the police and helped pull the girl out, Times of India reports.
Attack details
The victim told the police she was taken away by the husband of a woman she had stayed with, under the pretext of getting her a job in Delhi. Another man also joined them. They left on a motorcycle on Tuesday night.
The teenager became suspicious when they entered a deserted stretch, so she tried to escape. The men then gang-raped her and pushed her into the canal before fleeing.
Background and arrests
According to the police, the girl lost her father, and after her mother remarried and moved, she lived with her grandmother. Following her grandmother's death, she joined her mother but later left due to alleged mistreatment. She eventually lived with the woman whose husband raped her.
Circle officer Shobhit Kumar said a police team received a tip-off that one of the men was searching for his missing mobile phone near the canal. "When our team challenged him, he opened fire and was shot in the leg in retaliatory firing. He was admitted to a community health centre," Kumar said. The second accused was also arrested.
Police recovered a country-made pistol, a live cartridge, a spent shell and a motorcycle.
