A 16-year-old girl was gangraped by six people, including Congress’s youth wing president of Manendragarh district in Chhattisgarh, at a hotel in Bilaspur four months ago.

The youth wing president has been identified as Mohammed Shahnawaz. He, along with three others, were arrested on October 7 while police have launched search operations for two others, who are absconding.

Although the incident occurred four months ago, the minor girl recently mustered the courage and went to Chirmiri police station in Manendragarh district with her mother to lodge a complaint against the accused. In her complaint, she stated that the six men took her to a hotel in Chhattisgarh’s Bilaspur and gangraped her.

Chirmiri police have registered a case against the accused under sections 363 (punishment for kidnapping), 366A (procuration of minor girl) and relevant sections of the Prevention of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act.

On Friday, the Chhattisgarh Police arrested Youth Congress leader named Mohammed Shahnawaz and 3 others from Mahendragarh district for abducting a 16-year-old girl and gang-raping her at a hotel in Bilaspur. The accused have been booked under sections 363, and 366A of IPC and relevant sections of the POCSO Act.

In March, a married woman of Rajnandgaon was raped by secretary of the city Congress Committee, Vikas Gajbhiye, who was later arrested. The accused had also threatened to kill the woman’s husband. Also in March, a 15-year-old minor girl was reportedly gang-raped by Deepak Meena, son of Rajgarjh Congress MLA Johari Lal Meena and 4 others. 

Then in June, Sonia Gandhi’s personal secretary PP Madhavan was booked for raping a Hindu SC (Scheduled Caste) woman in the national capital. Also in June, a 23-year-old woman who had accused Congress-ruled Rajasthan’s Cabinet Minister Mahesh Joshi’s son of rape, suffered an ink attack in the national capital.

Crimes against women, especially Hindu women from all communities, have shot through the roof in ‘secular’ Congress-ruled states like Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and Jharkhand. Yet, leaders like Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Vadra continue to get a free pass from media and intelligentsia.

But this is not surprising in a nation where leaders of Congress youth wing, members of the powerful Ajmer dargah khadim family (descendants of Persian Sufi fakir Moinuddin Chishti who accompanied the genocidal invader Ghori) which controls the shrine, had carried out the 1992 Ajmer rape-blackmail ring where hundreds of Hindu school girls were sexually abused and repeatedly exploited – yet the party and the Chishti family have largely escaped critical scrutiny or commensurate punishment.