RAJASTHAN: An Indian woman was allegedly gang-raped in a school in thedesert state of Rajasthan where she had been quarantined for a night by thepolice amid the nationwide coronavirus lockdown, a police official said onSunday.
The incident occurred last week when the victim, a daily wage earner,sought shelter at a police station after walking alone for miles and losingthe way to her native village.
In the absence of a quarantine centre, local police housed her for thenight in a school building, where she was allegedly raped by three men.
“Three local men who raped the woman inside the school on April 23 havebeen arrested and sent to jail,” Parth Sharma, a deputy superintendent ofpolice in Sawai Madhopur district in Rajasthan and the investigatingofficer in the case, told *Reuters* by telephone.
According to the *Times of India*, the victim had been stuck in SawaiMadhopur for a month due to the lockdown and had decided to walk to herresidence in Jaipur.
The victim, aged between 40-45 years, said in a statement to the policethat she had been walking for several days before she reached a villagewhere she was raped.
Sharma said the woman had been sent to a local quarantine facility to gettested for Covid-19, the respiratory disease caused by the coronavirus.
“We don’t know how long she was on her own for, and who she came intocontact with, and her test results are not yet known,” he said, adding thata junior police official had been suspended for negligence.
“The woman was kept in a government school alone by the villagers despitethe fact that the local administration asked them not to do so,” *TOI* quoteda police official as saying.
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“The villagers were worried she may have the coronavirus because of whichthey wanted to keep her isolated,” the report added.
The nationwide lockdown imposed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi last monthto contain the spread of the virus prompted tens of thousands of workerswho lost their jobs in cities to walk for days in desperation to reachtheir homes in rural India.
Many of them are now in overcrowded quarantine centres and authorities arestruggling to cope.
Experts fear that the world’s biggest lockdown has not been able to reducethe spread of Covid-19, and country has begun to see a surge in cases withtesting being ramped up.
India, with a population of 1.3 billion, has reported 26,496 cases ofCovid-19, and 824 deaths.
Despite stringent laws, rape occurs every 20 minutes, on average, accordingto federal crime data. -APP/AFP
