KANNUR
: Police have arrested five persons for the
gang rape of a 16-year-old girl in a lodge at Parassinikkadavu here last month after threatening to publicise her nude video. The girl studies in Class X at a local school.
Thaliparamba DSP K V Venugopal said those arrested were K V Sandeep, C P Shamsudheen, V C Shabeer, K V Ayyoob and K Pavithran, all residents of the district. Pavithran is the manager of the lodge where the crime was committed. Eight more persons, including the girl's father, are being questioned but police refused to name them.
Police have filed 15 cases, of which three pertain to gang rape. It is suspected that around 20 persons are involved in the crime and some of these abuses have taken place outside the district.
The girl had told police that she had gone to the lodge to meet a woman, named Anjana, whom she got acquainted with on
Facebook. Her complaint says the gang had taken her to the lodge in the second week of November and took her photographs in compromising positions. The gang members later blackmailed her by threatening to publicise them and raped her, it says.
The gang members had called the girl's brother to
Shoranur
railway station the other day and tried to extort money from him. They showed him the photographs, following which there was an altercation and they thrashed him. He talked to his sister later and they approached police.
Police said the Facebook profile of Anjana could be fake and some racket could be involved in it. They also said there were some contradictions in the girl's statement.
Another girl, also a student of the same school, has also approached police with a complaint of abuse and a youth has been detained in this connection. Police said it was being investigated if both the cases had links with the same racket.