Mumbai photojournalist gang-raped: one arrested, four accused identified, say police.

Mumbai photojournalist gang-raped: one arrested, four accused identified, say police.(NDtv).
There is nationwide outrage over the horrific assault on a 22-year-old photojournalist, who was gang-raped by five men on Thursday evening while on assignment at the Shakti Mill compound in Lower Parel, south Mumbai.

The police have arrested one man, who they claim has confessed and has also helped identify four others, who are expected to be arrested soon.

The young woman is in Jaslok Hospital, where a doctor said this evening that she had suffered some internal and external injuries, but is stable and not in intensive care. She underwent an investigative procedure this morning, and was "doing well," though she is "slightly depressed," the doctor said.

The photojournalist's detailed statement to the police and that of a male colleague who was with her, helped identify the accused within hours, Mumbai's police chief said.

The young woman, who works with a magazine in the city, had gone to the isolated mill compound to click photographs. She was accosted by two men soon after she and her colleague entered the compound at 6 pm.

The men beat up and tied her colleague with a belt, before taking turns to rape her along with three others who joined them.

The woman fell unconscious and regained consciousness only at about 8 pm. The attackers had fled by then. The photojournalist and her colleague informed their place of work and then took a cab to the Jaslok Hospital, four km away. The doctors called the police.

The audacity of the crime has stunned the city. The Shakti Mills compound is isolated, but it is in the middle of Mumbai. It has a busy road just 50 metres away. At 6.30 in the evening, there was still daylight.

Before noon on Friday, the Mumbai Police signaled that it had solved the case and arrested one of the five men who allegedly gang raped a 22-year-old photojournalist at the city's Shakti mills compound.

The arrest was made in the very early hours of Friday. Mumbai's police commissioner Satyapal Singh said the accused, in his early 20s, had confessed to his role in the crime and had helped them identify the other four men, providing the police with names and whereabouts.

From the statements the police prepared sketches of the accused - "which were 85% correct," the police chief said - and also gleaned that they were most likely locals who lived in the vicinity of the abandoned mill compound, since they seemed to know the topography very well.

Mr Singh said the police was informed about the incident at about 8.30 on Thursday evening. By 8.45, he said, they had swung into action. "Twenty police teams were formed, different teams were given different tasks," he said.

The sketches were drawn at night and the police teams fanned out to search for the rapists, he said. Within hours the first arrest had been made.