Police Constable B K Singh
of the Vakola police station
at the tea stall where Cynthia DCosta was gang rapedFour drunken men abducted a 42-year-old resident of Vakola from her house on Friday night and gang raped her in a deserted tea stall near the Western Express Highway.
The men who have confessed to the crime are now in police custody. Police said that the assault on the woman was a fallout of a quarrel that her son had with the accused earlier during the day.
All the four accused, Vinod Dalvi, 26, Dhanraj Dalvi, 28, Ramesh Dalvi, 30 and Anish Divkar 28, were residents of the same locality where the woman lived and were known to her.
A police source who did not want to be named said that Dalvi was a gath pramukh with the Shiv Sena. Sources from the local Sena office said that after the incident, Dalvi was removed from his post.
The woman, Cynthia DCosta (names of the victim and her family changed) who works as a maid is now being treated in a hospital for injuries sustained during the assault.
She said that the accused were angry that she had helped her 21-year-old son, Frederick, to escape from their clutches.
The prelude
She said that her son who works in a restaurant had given some food to Johnny, a neighbour, that evening. Vinod teased the neighbour and called him a beggar. My son intervened on Johnnys behalf and during the arguments, he hit Vinod, she said.
At 10 pm, Vinod came to the victims house with his three friends seeking revenge. After a heated argument, the four went away and the family was settling down for their meal when they returned at 11.30 pm.
This time, they broke open the door of the one room tenement. They entered the house and wanted to beat my son. They had bamboo sticks with them. I asked Frederick to run away while I argued with the four. When they realised that he had run away, they turned on me, she said.
The incident
Cynthias husband is partially blind and her younger school-going son were also assaulted by the accused. They watched helplessly as the men dragged her away to a shack nearby. None of the neighbours came to the familys help. Police said that it was Gattari Amavasya night (the night before the month of Shravan).
Some neighbours have come forward to give their statements yesterday, said Inspector B Tambe of Vakola police station.
After being forcibly confined and raped for the whole night, the victim who was also severely beaten up by the accused, stumbled back to her home, a few hundred metres from the shack.
The Catholics Secular Forum, an association of the Christian community said that it is monitoring the case. We want to ensure that she gets justice, said Joseph Dias of the forum.
The four have been accused of sexual assault, abduction, wrongful confinement and trespassing. They were remanded to police custody till July 30 by a local court.
