Haryana has been witnessing at least one rape cum murder or sexual assault case almost every day for nearly ten days now, raising apprehensions that the state may give a tough competition to Delhi to own the title of the rape capital of India.
In the latest instance, a 22-year-old woman was allegedly raped by a man in Gurgaon's Sector 56, while her husband and brother-in-law were held at gunpoint by three others.
The shocking incident took place late on Monday night and the police have arrested four men in the case.
'They threatened to kill us all'
The woman was returning to her house in the Tony South City area of Gurgaon, along with her husband and brother-in-law, after attending a wedding in the Sector 51.
A group of men arrived at the spot and dragged the woman out of the car and raped her when her husband stopped the car and stepped out to urinate.
"After the function got over around 9pm, we decided to return home and my brother-in-law gave us a ride in his Maruti Ertiga car to drop us at our South City home. When we reached near Business Park in sector 56, my husband asked for the car to be stopped so he could step out for urination," the victim was quoted as saying by India Today.
At that time, two cars came and stopped by them and the men asked them why they were halting there.
The husband of the victim alleged that the men started assaulting them at once. One of the accused pulled the victim out of the car and dragged her to the nearby bushes, while the others held her husband and relative at gunpoint.
"By then, the other three accused had taken us at gunpoint. We requested them to let her go but to no avail," narrated the victim's husband.
The victim also told the news outlet that when she started crying, the accused man threatened to kill her and her husband.
"He covered my mouth and raped me," said the victim. The accused fled the scene and also threatened the victim, her husband and brother-in-law with dire consequences if they approached the cops.
The victim's husband had managed to note down the licence plate number of one of the cars of the assailants and reported the police about the crime.
The police arrested the four men who have been identified as Deshvir, Dharmender, Pawan and Sanjeet, who allegedly raped the woman. The cars have also been seized.
An FIR under the sections of 376 (rape), 323 (Punishment for voluntarily causing hurt), 506 (Punishment for criminal intimidation) and 34 (Criminal act by several people) of the Indian Penal Code has been registered against the four men who belong to the Johalka village near Sohna of Gurgaon.
The accused were arrested from their village.
Haryana has been in the news for the past few days due to several cases of rapes reported in areas including Jind, Faridabad, Panipat, Fatehabad and Hisar.
The Congress in Haryana has been demanding the resignation of Chief Minister Manhohar Lal Khattar, owing to the lack of law and order in the country.
Rapes at gunpoint
This is not the first time that women have been sexually assaulted in the presence of their family.
On August 30, a minor was allegedly raped in Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh, by a man while two of his accomplices held her mother and brother hostage at gunpoint.The 11-year-old was assaulted in her own house.
Before that, on August 28, a 14-year-old girl was allegedly raped and beaten up by a man at gunpoint in Jabalpur village of Shamli district in Muzaffarnagar, Uttar Pradesh. The accused was later identified as 25-year-old Ankit Kumar.
In the first half of 2017, a woman was raped by two men at Bishnupur, in South 24 Parganas, West Bengal. The men broke into her house on June 13 and assaulted her while keeping her husband at gunpoint. It was also alleged that the assaulters threw the victim's children into a nearby pond.
