Mumbai top cop assures early justice in gang rape

Mumbai police Commissioner Satyapal Singh Monday assured early justice for the young photojournalist who was gang raped by five men here Aug 22.

"Our priority is to collect the evidence and file the chargesheet as soon as possible," said Satyapal Singh while talking to reporters.

With the arrest of two accused Sunday, police have now taken into custody all the five suspects.

The police chief said all evidence had been collected and it will be handed over to forensic experts Tuesday.

"The mobile phone on which the crime was video recorded by the accused has been recovered. We have also seized the phone of the victim which was sold off by the accused," said Satyapal Singh.

He said out of the five accused three were history-sheeters. He also confirmed that none of the accused was a juvenile.

The police chief countered the claims by the parents of one of the accused that their son was a minor. "The accused was arrested in 2011 in a case," he said, suggesting that the suspect in question was aged over 18 years.

"He is not a minor. As per our record he has completed his 18 years of age," Satyapal Singh said.

He, however, did not rule out the possibility of conducting a bone test to recheck his age.

The 22-year-old photojournalist was gang raped by the five accused when she was on an assignment for an English magazine and had gone to a desolate area in central Mumbai to take pictures of the abandoned factories. Her male companion was also attacked by the accused.

The woman remains warded in hospital after suffering serious injuries.

On Sunday, her family pleaded for her privacy while the Maharashtra government said public prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam, who successfully called for death sentence to Mumbai terror attack accused Ajmal Kasab, would take up the case against the five rapists.

The Mumbai gang rape mirrored the Dec 16, 2012 sexual assault in a bus in Delhi on a young woman who eventually died in a Singapore hospital. The Mumbai incident shocked the entire nation, triggering fresh demands for death to rapists.