Bhubaneswar: Police on Thursday recreated the crime scene in Dhauli gang-rape case following the arrest of the key suspect from Odisha’s Ganjam district.
He has been identified as Satya Prakash alias Happy.
This comes a couple days after the Crime Branch tagged it as a Red Flag case. Two other two accused, Kalia Patra and Bibhu Mishra, — one of the perpetrators and an abettor — were arrested on Monday.
According to sources, Happy disguised his identity in Khurda and fled to Ganjam to evade arrest. A history-sheeter with over a dozen criminal cases against him, he was released fro
m Jharpada special jail barely a week ago after being arrested in connection with a group clash incident. While five men were allegedly involved in the heinous crime on an isolated stretch on December 10, Happy is suspected to be one among the two of them, who sexually assaulted the 17-year-old girl.
According to the complaint, on the evening of the incident, the girl and her cousin were intercepted by the five men near Lingipur canal road at around 6.30 pm. The assailants seized the scooter’s keys and demanded between Rs 50,000 and Rs 1 lakh from them. When the victims expressed their inability to pay the amount, the men overpowered them and began severely beating the cousin. Two of the attackers then dragged the girl to a nearby forested area, where she was repeatedly raped. The girl told police that the ordeal lasted until 9.30 pm, with the criminals threatening to circulate the video online if they reported the crime to anyone. The cousin also suffered severe injuries during the attack.