Hyderabad gang rape case: Plea to take down videos from social media

Hyderabad: With the videos relating to the gang rape of 17-year-old girl in Hyderabad still active on social media, the victim’s family has approached the authorities to take them down.

Video and photographs of the victim along with the accused are still reported to be active on certain social media platforms.

The victim’s family approached the women safety wing with a request to take action to remove the videos. They provided details of video and photo links.

The police are now planning to write to Instagram to take down the videos and photographs. Criminal action is also likely against those who uploaded the content.

Minutes before the gang rape in an Innova car on May 28, the accused had taken videos and photographs of each other molesting the victim in a vehicle. They had also uploaded the same on social media.

Two videos of minors molesting the victim are said to be active on Instagram. The faces of the victim and three accused are reportedly seen in these videos. In one of the photos, injury marks are visible on the neck of the girl.

Women safety wing officials have asked the city police to write to Instagram to take down the objectionable content. Police will also seek details of the account holders who uploaded videos and photographs.

Earlier, the Cyber crime police had registered four cases against some Facebook and Instagram account holders for uploading the content.

Six accused including five minors had trapped the girl after she attended a day party with them at a bar in Jubilee Hills on May 28.

Five of the accused later sexually assaulted the victim in a car. The incident came to light only on May 31 after the victim’s father lodged a complaint with the police and the police recorded the victim’s statement the next day.

Five accused includingAson of a leader of ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) have been charged with gang rape while sixth accused, who is the son of a legislator of Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM), is facing molestation charges.

The police last week filed a chargesheet in the case. It also made a plea to the Juvenile Justice Board to allow the minors to be treated as majors for trial in view of the serious nature of the offence.

The charge sheet was filed on July 28, a day after five minors were released on bail.

Four minors were granted bail by the Juvenile Justice Board while the sixth was given bail by the Telangana High Court.

Saduddin Malik, the only adult in the case, remained in jail as his bail petition was already dismissed.

The police have filed the charge sheet with details of all the technical evidence gathered including identification parade, recording of statement of the survivor under Section 164 of the Criminal Procedure Code before the magistrate, DNA test and forensic examination of the car in which the minor victim was gang raped, report of the forensic analysis of the DNA samples collected from the victim’s clothes, CCTV footage from bar and other places.