The woman said she was called to the police station and humiliated after she filed the gang-rape case.
Highlights
- Woman allegedly gang-raped by 4 friends of her husband in Thrissur
- Woman alleges police humiliated her, forced her to withdraw case
- Police allegedly asked: "Which one of them gave you greatest pleasure?"
A woman in Kerala who was allegedly gang-raped by her husband's friends wept as she went public with her story today and said she was forced to withdraw her complaint because of humiliation by the police. "Which one of them gave you the greatest pleasure?" she was allegedly asked by a police officer.
"Far more than rape, it was the police threats and humiliation that was unbearable," the 32-year-old woman said in Thiruvananthapuram, speaking to reporters with her husband by her side, both their faces covered.
The woman first shared her story with prominent dubbing artiste and activist Bhagya Lakshmi, whose Facebook post has been widely circulated and has drawn a response from Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan. She called the artiste after watching her in a TV discussion recently.
"She told me it's fortunate that Jisha and Soumya died or they would have to face repeated humiliation," Ms Bhagya Lakshmi wrote in her post.
The Chief Minister and Kerala police chief are expected to meet the woman today.
Two years ago, the woman said, when her husband was away, four of his friends came to her house in Thrissur, around 280 km from Thiruvananthapuram, and claimed he was in hospital. She went with them, but they allegedly drove her somewhere outside the city.
The woman alleged that the men took turns to rape her.
After two years, the woman confided in her husband, who urged her in August to go to the police. "I was called to the police station for four days continuously and made to sit there from morning to evening. I was asked humiliating questions," the woman said.
She alleges harassment by the police in her neighbourhood, who allegedly demanded to know why she had gone to the women's cell. "They later gave me a letter to produce before the magistrate and forced me to withdraw the case. They made me sign papers but I don't know what was in it," she said.
The woman has named her alleged rapists; one of them, a CPM councilor, has accused the woman of lying and getting back at him for demanding money he loaned to the couple.