Pharmacy Student's Rape Allegations False

The Rachakonda Police who had been investigating the alleged kidnap and gang rape of a 19-year-old pharmacy student today revealed that they had found that the girl had been lying to them.

The student had claimed that she was abducted from Keesara by an auto-rickshaw driver who had then raped her along with his friends, on Wednesday.

While the police had initially added charges of gang rape to the girl's original complaint of kidnapping, they confirmed that she had neither been abducted nor raped.

Addressing the matter, Rachakonda Commissioner of Police Mahesh Bhagawath said, "On realising that the police were involved in the matter, the girl got scared and cooked up a story to mislead us. It was later discovered that she had not even boarded the auto-rickshaw of the man she had accused, on the day of the alleged incident. She has admitted to this as well."

"We have found that she was alone from the time she got off an auto at 5:20 pm at Keesara till she reached Annojiguda at 7:20 pm. In fact, she had herself removed her clothing before we found her. We gathered evidence regarding this using the footage of more than 100 CCTVs and through mobile phone locations. We also spoke to various witnesses including the auto-rickshaw driver who had dropped her to Keesara. Their statements, unlike hers, were corroborated by their mobile phone location records and CCTV footage," he added.

On being asked why the police had added the rape charges without first gathering medical evidence of the same, the CP said, "Though we did find her account of events suspicious, we did not want to jump to any conclusions prematurely, and did not press her for details at that point assuming she was traumatised. We did not question her on this front, and directed the concerned teams to gather medical evidence. In fact, the necessary samples were even collected and sent for forensic analysis. It was only when we analysed the CCTV footage closely that we realised that the girl had misled us entirely. We later found out that she had simply been wanting to run away from home. Further, she had tried to implicate an auto-rickshaw driver because she had had an altercation with him over fares, some time ago. When we questioned her again on Friday, she admitted to having lied to us."

In the midst of all the kerfuffle, the police said, the auto-rickshaw unions and drivers in the area had been extremely cooperative, and had helped the police trace the vehicles the girl had described.

"We would like to extend our sincerest apologies to the seven auto-rickshaw drivers who were interrogated based on false charges. We thank them for their support and cooperation," Bhagwat said.

It is now the student's turn to face the consequences of her actions - since she had misled the police, legal action will be initiated against her very soon, and the matter will be taken up at the appropriate court.