LUCKNOW: Two mentally and physically challenged women – inmates of a private shelter home in Uttar Pradesh’s Barabanki – were allegedly gang-raped by staffers. Police are searching for one of the survivors who is missing. Three persons have been arrested in this connection, including shelter director
Rajesh Kumar
, security guard Ram Kailash, and Amrita Devi, a staffer who allegedly assisted the accused in the crime.
The arrests came on Thursday after a woman – the facility’s treasurer-cum-warden – filed a complaint at Haidergarh police station two days ago. She claimed that the shelter director came to the facility along with a woman staffer. He and other staffers gang-raped two mentally challenged inmates and even abducted one of them, said SP
Dinesh Kumar
Singh.
SP Singh added that one of the survivors underwent a medical examination, the result of which was inconclusive. Her swab test report is still awaited. “We have formed four teams to search for the missing inmate,” the SP added.
A three-member team headed by an sub divisional magistrate-rank officer inspected the shelter home and found inadequate facilities, after which the inmates were moved to an orphanage in Lucknow, Barabanki district magistrate Satyendra Kumar said.
Preliminary investigation revealed that the treasurer lived in the shelter home along with her husband, SP Dinesh Singh added.
“The accused director, Rajesh Kumar, had previously started a similar shelter home in Sultanpur, where the treasurer had given land at the time of the organisation’s establishment. Rajesh, however, had not paid for the same, leading to a dispute between them,” he said, adding that police were probing all aspects of the case.
