’Lynched Man Gave Me Rs. 5000 to Stay Quiet’: Alleged Rape Survivor

mangaloretoday.com/ NDTV

Dimapur, March 8:  Two days after a rape accused was dragged out of a jail by a mob of over 5,000 people, lynched, and his body dragged for seven kilometres, the alleged rape survivor has spoken out, accusing the lynched man of giving her Rs. 5000 to not narrate the incident to anyone.

"The accused person was my neighbour... It was only after the incident... he told me, he gave me the money to keep silent...I took the money and gave it at the police station," the woman said.

 

Recalling the ordeal, she told NDTV, "On the night of February 23, the co-accused called me to have some snacks together. He told me that he was alone so I decided to go with him. Later I found that he was not alone, but with the man accused. I told him I won’t go but the co-accused told me that everything is okay when I am with him."

"The co-accused on the pretext of meeting his friend went away...the accused then took me to a hotel... he raped me twice," she added.

However, the family of the lynched man claims the medical report of the rape complainant says she was not sexually assaulted.

Speaking to NDTV, he alleged that his brother, Syed Sarif Uddin Khan, had been made a scapegoat and framed by Naga groups, and claimed that the police were hand in glove in the incident.

"Is the Nagaland government running a jungle raj? The girl who filed the rape complaint was my brother’s wife’s cousin. Nagaland police have said that the medical reports say she was not raped," said Jamal Uddin Khan to NDTV.

"There are multiple members of our family serving in the Army. How could they have killed him claiming he was Bangladeshi? My brother was made a scapegoat," he added.

A number of questions have been raised over the events leading to the lynching. These include questions over the unavailability of a medical report to confirm the rape of the Naga woman, for which Syed Sarif Uddin Khan had been charged. Other questions surround to the Nagaland police not confirming the whereabouts of the alleged rape victim and why police had initially claimed that Syed Sarif Uddin Khan was an illegal Bangladeshi immigrant.

Syed Sarif Uddin Khan had been lynched by a mob on Thursday. The strong mob had broken into the Central prison in Dimapur, where he was in judicial custody on rape charges, paraded him naked through the town, beat him to death and hung his body from a clock tower.