Bengaluru: A woman, aged about 30, was allegedly gangraped in Bengaluru on Wednesday night, the fourth such incident in the last two months in the country’s information technology (IT) hub.
Ironically, the accused are security guards deputed for public safety at Cubbon Park, a garden spread over 100 acres in the city’s central administrative area.
The woman, hailing from Tumkur, 70 km from Bengaluru, had come to the city to get membership to a tennis club inside Cubbon Park. But since she arrived late, the club told her to return the next day.
According to the police, she asked the guards deployed in the park run by the horticulture department for a way out. Instead of showing her the right way, the guards allegedly took her to a secluded spot and raped her.
The incident came to light when a police officer on patrol found the woman sitting alone in the park in the wee hours of Thursday.
“We rushed her to Bowring hospital for medical check-up. The two guards have been arrested under sections 376 D and 506 of IPC,” said Cubbon Park police inspector C. Balakrishna.
Bengaluru is one of the fastest growing cities in the world. It houses not only technology companies such as International Business Machines Corp., Microsoft Corp., Infosys Ltd and Wipro Ltd, it also hosts the fastest growing start-up ecosystem in the country.
However, urban planners and NGOs have been criticising the city administrators for not providing adequate infrastructure or safety to the talent pool that it attracts.
A 19-year-old girl, a nurse who was returning from her night shift, was raped inside a moving bus in the city’s eastern suburb on 6 November. On 17 October, a 24-year-old sex worker was gangraped by six men and was found on the streets, barely conscious.
A 23-year-old BPO employee was gangraped inside a moving van, while she was on her way back from work, in the city’s south-east suburb on 3 October. In what led to wide protests, then Karnataka home minister K.J. George, who is the state development minister now, said that two men raping a woman could not be termed a gangrape. The minister retracted his statement later.
Chargesheets are yet to be filed in the four cases, though the Bengaluru police has been swift to make arrests.
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