India: Woman gang-raped by BJP party worker

A 20-year-old woman was gang-raped allegedly by four persons, including a BJP functionary, in Madhya Pradesh’s Shahdol district India, police said on Sunday.

The ruling party later in the evening issued a statement; that the accused office-bearer had been removed from its primary membership.

She was abducted in a four-wheeler, forced to drink liquor in a farmhouse in the Gadaghat area under Jaitpur police station limits; and then gang-raped on February 18 and 19; said Shahdol Additional Superintendent of Police (ASP) Mukesh Vaish.

Soon after news broke out that the name of BJP Jaitpur Mandal chief Vijay Tripathi figured in the FIR as one of the accused; the BJP issued a release informing that he had been thrown out of the party.

“On February 20, the four accused dumped her in front of her house. She filed a police complaint on Sunday. The victim was first taken to Jaitpur health center and then shifted to the district hospital for treatment,” he added.

BJP canceled primary membership of accused

Shahdol district BJP president Kamal Pratap Singh has sacked Vijay Tripathi from Jaitpur Mandal president’s post; and primary membership of the party after his name figured in the gang-rape case, the release said.

“The BJP has no place for such workers involved in heinous crimes. The BJP strongly deplores such a character and crime. Thus, taking disciplinary action; it sacks Vijay Tripathi from the post of Jaitpur BJP president and membership”; according to the statement.

Efforts are underway to nab the four accused, said the Additional SP.

Main accused of two-decade-old gang-rape arrested by Police

The main accused in the case of the two-decade-old gang-rape of the wife of a former Indian Forest Officer that almost brought the J. B Patnaik-led Congress government in Odisha to its knees has been arrested.

Biban Biswal alias Bibekananda Biswal was arrested from the Amby Valley City Project near Navi Mumbai by Commissionerate Police for Bhubaneswar and Cuttack on Sunday. He had been on the run for the past 22 years.