4 held for raping two, murdering one

VADODARA, July 22: The Ahmedabad police have arrested four people, including a woman, suspected of being involved in a case of raping two...

VADODARA, July 22: The Ahmedabad police have arrested four people, including a woman, suspected of being involved in a case of raping two sisters of Ahmedabad and murdering one of them. On July 5, the railway police had found a half-naked and partially decomposed body of an unidentified 19-year-old girl below a railway bridge between Fajelpur and Nandesari. When nobody turned up to claim the body, the police closed the case.

However, the story resumed on July 18 when villagers found a 17-year-old girl, Nargis alias Sapnaben, unconscious on the banks of a canal in Dhodikui village of Padra taluka. The villagers then informed the Padra police, who in turn informed the Ahmedabad police.

According to the Ahmedabad police, Nargis 8212; now back with her parents 8212; revealed that her parents had got acquainted with a vegetable vendor Ramesh and his wife, Savita. After winning her parents8217; confidence, Ramesh asked them to send their daughters, Razia and herself, with them to Anand; where the couple could find them jobs and suitable grooms.

In early June, the vendor-couple took the two sisters to Uttrasand, near Anand and changed Razia8217;s name to Sumanben and Nargis8217;s to Sapnaben and told the sisters not to reveal their true identity as it was a Hindu area and their lives would be at risk, the police added.

When the rains broke, they shifted to the neighbouring Vadod village, where they found work as farm labour. Meanwhile, the couple made trips to Anand to find prospective grooms8217; for the sisters and happened to meet one John Macwan. Macwan, with a friend, Suresh, came to Vadod to see the girls.

Razia was told by the couple that Suresh had agreed to marry her and that she would have to go with them to their village, Fajelpur, for the wedding. While Razia agreed, and went with the vendor-couple, Macwan and Suresh, Nargis was left behind at Vadod.

But at Nandesari railway station, Razia was allegedly raped by Ramesh, Macwan and Suresh, and was strangled when she threatened to report the matter to the police.

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According to Nargis, after all of them returned, she was told that Suresh had married Razia. But after being allegedly raped by Ramesh and Macwan, later on, Nargis began to suspect that all was not well. When she demanded to see Razia, she was brought to Vadodara on July 17 and thrown into a canal, Nargis told the police.

Inspector Mobin Pathan at the Vadodara railway police station, who supervised the interrogation, said that all the four accused in the case were arrested recently from different places on the information provided by the girl.