Maha horror: Widow raped by 7 men for 8 years, Beed police launch probe

In a horrific incident, a widow was allegedly raped and gang-raped by seven persons for over eight years before she gathered courage to lodge a complaint, the police said here.

The Beed Police have launched a probe against the seven accused persons after the victim named those who indulged even in unnatural acts repeatedly, either alone or in a group, at various locations in the district for more than eight years. Arrests are expected shortly, said an investigating officer.

According to the police, it was in 2014 when the widow, then 24, went to her home late in the evening in an auto-rickshaw, but later the driver called to inform that she had forgotten her purse in his three-wheeler.

He called her to his home, overpowered and raped her, and even made a video clip of the act. But she kept quiet in view of the social stigma it could attract as she was a widow.

Later, threatening to expose her MMS on social media, the auto-rickshaw driver - identified as Sandeep Pingle - repeatedly summoned her to various locations and raped her, ignoring her pleas and protests to stop her exploitation.

Pingle allegedly passed on the video clip to his relatives, Gorakh Ingole and his brother Balaji Ingole, in 2015 and the duo also started to threaten, blackmail and rape the widow repeatedly.

The IO said that around 2020, Gorakh Ingole took her on his bike to an isolated location in the hills of Hivra where another four of his friends took turns to gang-rape her for more than six hours, including indulging in unnatural sexual acts.

After that assault, the woman was bleeding profusely from her private parts, but they ignored her cries and continued their act.

At one point in 2021, the widow had become pregnant and when she told her perpetrators, Gorakh Ingole forcibly took her to a clinic for an abortion.

Weary of the ongoing regular tortures, the widow left Beed town and started to work as a restaurant manager in Majalgaon, but the oppressors pursued her even there and blatantly continued their demonic behaviour.

Finally, she mustered courage and lodged a complaint with Majalgaon Police on Thursday about her shocking travails, the mental, physical and sexual assaults, injuries and agony she silently endured for so many years.

"Since this is a very serious crime, we immediately lodged a Zero FIR and transferred it to the Beed City Police for conducting further investigations," an official from the Majalgaon police station told IANS.

The accused have been booked under various sections of the Indian Penal Code pertaining to rape, conspiracy, gang-rape, abduction, blackmail and other crimes, he said.