The teen was assaulted by 4 men who kept taking tea and gutka (tobacco) breaks
A 19-year-old woman who was tied up and gang-raped last week in Bhopal "had consensual sex with two of the accused" says a medical report now binned as a "mistake by a junior doctor".
"The report was prepared by a junior doctor and they rectified the error immediately," said Karan Peepre, the Superintendent of the government-run Sultania hospital.
The teen, studying for the Indian Police Service (IPS), was assaulted on October 31 near the Habibganj Railway Station, in the busiest part of the Madhya Pradesh capital, by four men who kept taking tea and
gutka (tobacco) breaks. She was grabbed as she headed to the station to take a train home after coaching classes. Ten police officers were suspended and three transferred for an 11-hour delay in her complaint being filed; one officer had dismissed her account as a "filmy story".
The woman and her parents - both in the police forces and stationed in another city - later spotted two of the rapists and dragged them to the police station, after which the police acted.
The first medical report immediately after the police took her complaint allegedly said she had consensual sex.
"It's wrong but it has been corrected, in future we have issued instructions that a senior woman doctor or her team will assist in the internal and external inquiry of such sensitive cases," Dr Peepre said, adding that action would be taken against the doctors involved.
Amid condemnation by the opposition Congress, state minister Sharad Jain conceded that the use of the word "consensual" in a gang-rape report was appalling just on the basis of "humanity". "Nobody will be spared if guilty ... On the basis of humanity we can't act without proper knowledge," he said.
The police were accused of trying to cover up the crime because it took place on a day it was preoccupied with the Madhya Pradesh founding day celebration.