New Delhi: Two young Army officers were beaten up and one of their two women friends was allegedly raped by unidentified men while the group was out on a picinic in Madhya Pradesh’s Indore on Wednesday, news agency PTI reported.
The two officers, aged 23 and 24, are enrolled in the Young Officers (YO) course at the Infantry School in Mhow cantonment. They had gone to a nearby picnic spot on the Mhow-Mandleshwar road along with their friends on Tuesday night, Badgonda police station in-charge Lokendra Singh Hirore said.
Around 2 am on Wednesday, a group of six people arrived near the picnic spot and started beating up one of the officers and a female friend, who were sitting in the car, PTI reported. The other officer and the woman were on a hilltop and reached the spot upon hearing the commotion.
The attackers reportedly held the duo in the car hostage at gunpoint and asked the other officer to fetch Rs 10 lakh in ransom. The officer used this opportunity to inform his seniors at in Mhow who then alerted the police.
The attackers had escaped by the time the police team arrived.
The group was taken to Mhow civil hospital where a medical examination confirmed that one of the women had been raped.
A case has been registered under sections 70 (gangrape), 310-2 (dacoity), 308-2 (extortion) and 115-2 (voluntarily causing hurt) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and under sections of the Arms Act based on the complaint filed by the officer, the Times of India reported.
Additional superintendent of police Rupesh Dwivedi told the newspaper that of the six suspects identified so far, two have been detained.
“We arrested two men. One of them has a case of loot registered against him in 2016. This was not an organised gang. They saw these young people who had gathered at a night spot and decided to attack them. One person also had a pistol on him,” Indore Rural SP Hitika Vasal said.
