A gang hijacked a police vehicle, stripped the policemen in it and dressed in their uniform to abduct a girl from her home in a remote village in Madhya Pradesh’s Panna district early on Sunday, officials said.
Police said the gang of five men called a Dial 100 van, saying an inebriated man was creating nuisance near Bamuraha village under Amangang tehsil. Bamuraha is situated in a remote area, about 60 kilometres away from the district headquarters of Panna.
Head constable Prakash Mandal and a special armed force jawan Subhash Dubey reached the spot and saw a man lying on the road with his face down. When they got close, the man got up and aimed a pistol at them and four other men joined him.
Cops stripped, tied
The gang then stripped the policemen and the driver, tied their hands and legs and put them in another car. Some of them wore their uniforms and went to Bamuraha village in the Dial 100 van.
The girl’s father got suspicious when the gang members knocked at his door. They asked him to come to the police station with his daughter to record their statement in connection with the complaint she had lodged regarding an alleged sexual harassment. They forced him, his brother and daughter to sit in the van.
The gang members forced the girl’s father and uncle to get down from the van after a while. They went back to the spot where they left policemen, returned their uniforms as well as the van and sped away with the girl.
‘Accused involved in many crimes’
Amanganj Police inspector Rakesh Tiwari said they suspect the girl and the main accused Devraj Singh, a resident of Hinauta village, were in a relationship. He said Singh is involved in many crimes, including a murder, and was externed from the district.
The girl was sent to Sagar to write her undergraduate examination where her uncle objected to her frequently meeting Singh. The girl lodged a police complaint against her uncle alleging he had sexually harassed her. After she filed the first information report (FIR), her father asked her to drop out of college and return to their village.
Tiwari said the police suspected that the FIR was lodged by the girl at Singh’s behest.
A manhunt has been launched to nab the criminals. However, no one has been arrested so far.