Police on Monday arrested six men for allegedly assaulting a woman and forcibly stripping her of her headscarf when she was with a man of a different community in Muzaffarnagar’s Khalapar area on Saturday afternoon. The action was taken after a video of the incident surfaced on social media and police received a complaint from the victims.
The police identified the accused as Sartaj, Shadab, Mohammad Umar, Arsh, Shoaib and Shami, all residents of Muzzaffarnagar.
The FIR was registered under section 115(2) (voluntarily causing hurt), 352 (intentional insult with the intent to provoke a breach of public peace), 191(2) (rioting) and 74 (Assault to outrage modesty of woman) of the BNS against unidentified men on Saturday. The woman’s mother works with a micro-finance company and the man she was with is her colleague. The two had gone to a residential neighbourhood to collect payments from clients when the incident happened, police said.
“On Saturday, between 4 pm to 4:30 pm, a woman from Khalapar area in Muzaffarnagar and a man from Shamli were returning after collecting money from Sujru village in Muzaffarnagar. At Khalapar, a group of locals stopped them outside a battery shop and assaulted them,” said Muzzaffarnagar Circle Officer Raju Kumar Sab.
The video shows a group of men trying to pull the woman’s headscarf off as she tries to walk away screaming.
Talking to The Indian Express, the woman said that her mother works with a micro finance company and she had asked her to collect interest payments from clients. “My mother sent me with her colleague Sachin Kumar to collect payments from Sujru village,” she said.
She also said they were heading towards Minakshi Chowk after collecting money from a woman in Sujru village when the group confronted them. “When we reached Darji wali gali, around eight to 10 men surrounded us and started to abuse us. They pulled my headscarf and started making videos… they threatened to make the video viral,” she said. The police said the remaining accused will be arrested soon.
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