NEW DELHI, Aug 28
Agra witnessed an unfortunate development when a 20-year-old engineering student from Lucknow reportedly stripped in public demanding the arrest of the man who allegedly raped her. The accused, 22, is an MTech student at the Jammu campus of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), reports said.
The woman is pursuing BTech as an engineering student at a college affiliated with a central university in Agra. She decided to go ahead with the extreme form of protest as the accused was not arrested by the police even after 14 days, news reports said.
Following her decision to strip in public, the young woman was taken to a mental asylum and placed under observation for three days, Indian Express said in a report. However, the IIT student, who hails from UP’s Ghazipurr, was arrested on Tuesday — 17 days after the woman filed a complaint, the daily added.
The complainant alleged that she was raped in a moving car by the MTech student on the evening of August 10.
She filed a complaint with the UP Police the following day and a FIR was filed. However, the police allegedly made no effort to arrest the accused, since the accused was in Jammu at the time of the alleged rape, the daily said.
Police inaction led to survivor’s protest
Hellbent on bringing the accused before the law, the woman visited police stations and met with senior officers many times, Indian Express reported.
However, the UP Police’s approach remained cold and the student, on Sunday, stripped in public in Agra, as a show of protest. She undressed on an Agra street and shouted anti-police slogans before getting covered by two onlookers, who later took her to a mental clinic. After restricting her to the observation ward of the institution for three days and confirming she was mentally stable, her mother was notified and reportedly sent home.
Gross negligence?
Following the development, the man was summoned to UP and was found to have harassed the woman mentally and physically. It is also claimed that the woman had filed a complaint against the man in July — before she was allegedly raped.
The UP Police took no action against the youth back then due to the lack of evidence.
