Ghaziabad rape: Cops not convinced

GHAZIABAD: A week after a 22-year-old woman alleged she was raped in a moving van between Ghaziabad and Noida and later dumped in front of Fortis, police have said that their investigations so far suggest that the woman may have falsely tried to implicate the accused.
Police are going by cellphone text messages and CCTV footage as well as eyewitness accounts.The medical report – a copy of which is with TOI – is not conclusive. It talks of abrasions on the thighs, but states there are no internal injuries. The result of a swab test is awaited.
But there are some puzzling inconsistencies in the police version. Ghaziabad police said CCTV footage shows Akhil Tomar, the main accused, had filled petrol in a pump in Kaushambi between 9.30 pm and 10 pm, the period during which the incident had reportedly taken place.
The police also said they have recorded the statement of a juice stall owner in Sahibabad’s Rajendra Nagar area who has confirmed that Akhil Tomar had come to his shop at around 9:30 pm on that night to drink a glass of juice.
Now, the distance between Rajendra Nagar (where Akhil Tomar was drinking juice) and Kaushambi (where he was filling up his car) as shown on Google Maps is 9.4 km, a distance which can be covered in about half an hour. How could Akhil Tomar then be in two different places at the same time?
What is also unexplained is how the woman got those injuries on her thighs.
The police, however, claim that there is evidence that the woman had been threatening both Akhil Tomar and Yogesh Pandit a few days before the ‘incident’. The woman had threatened the duo of dire consequences over some previous enmity between them. Mobile phone records of Akhil Tomar retrieved by the police show that the woman had sent him a text message on July 2, saying, “Agar tum mera phone nahin utha rahey ho to kya tum mujhse bach jaoge? (By not taking my calls do you suppose you can escape from me?)”
In fact, on the evening the incident allegedly took place, around 7.30pm, Akhil Tomar had filed a complaint with DCP (East), Ghazipur, New Delhi, alleging that the woman was trying to threaten and intimidate him with dire consequences for not meeting him and taking his calls.
The police further said that enquiries made by them so far also show that Yogesh Pandit, the other accused, was in his village, Rajpur in Loni, during the time when the woman was allegedly gangraped.
“Police are in possession of all documents, including CCTV footage and call detail records. We are examining the case very closely now,” DSP Atul Yadav said.
Police officials who have video-graphed the statements of Satish Bhati, the man who allegedly found the woman lying in a battered condition in Noida, claimed Bhati said he was drunk when he found the woman. Ghaziabad SSP Dharmendra Yadav said according to Bhati’s statement, the bottle was not inserted into her private parts but was inside the pajama she was wearing.
“Bhati told the police that the bottle was found stuck between the thighs of the woman. The bottle also could not be recovered despite a massive search as Bhati had thrown it away,” Yadav added.