Hangal gang-rape case

Haveri (Karnataka), March 8 (IANS) Karnataka Police have submitted a charge sheet in the sensational January 8 Hangal gang-rape case allegedly committed by moral vigilantes in Haveri district.

Sources said on Friday that the police have submitted 873 pages of charge sheet with the Hangal JMFC Court.

The police had arrested 19 persons in connection with the case, including seven who allegedly committed gang rape. The charge sheet has named all 19 of them, sources said.

The victim of moral policing had released a video on January 11 in which she had said that she was repeatedly raped by vigilantes in Haveri district of Karnataka.

The homemaker was dragged out of a hotel after being seen with a person from another religion and beaten up in Hangal town of the district on January 8.

The victim, who belongs to the minority community, stated that when she was at the hotel, a gang of five to six men barged inside, questioned her and forcibly took her away on their bikes. They took her to an isolated place and assaulted her brutally and later all of them raped her.

They asked her to get into a car and the driver also raped her. Her ordeal did not end here. She was taken to two to three other places and gang-raped again. The accused later took her to the national highway where she boarded a bus.

“I want them to be punished,” she demanded in the video in an appeal to the police.

The victim's husband also appeared before the media and stated that his wife was gang-raped by the vigilantes.

“They kidnapped and inhumanly attacked my wife. She revealed this brutality to a family member. She had not told me,” he stated.

The state government had come under pressure as the Bharatiya Janata Party had launched a series of attacks on the Congress government and charged that Chief Minister Siddaramaiah's government was hushing up the case. The Karnataka BJP unit had staged a massive protest in Haveri led by Leader of the Opposition R. Ashoka and former CM Basavaraj Bommai and demanded that the probe be handed over to a Special Investigation Team (SIT).