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Sixth accused in foreign student's rape arrested

     Mumbai: The Mumbai police on Tuesday arrested Vinamra Soni, the only absconding accused of a gang of six that was charged with the rape of an American student at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS). The arrest was carried out after a local court refused to grant Soni anticipatory bail. Five others named by the girl had been arrested within two days of the complaint being registered. The TISS student whose identity has been withheld had accused the six boys, most of them students of reputed south Mumbai colleges of drugging her and then gang-raping her. Soni, 21, who has been accused of raping a 23-year-old US national student of the prestigious institute approached the sessions court seeking anticipatory bail, apprehending arrest in the case. He was at large after the victim lodged a complaint. Soni's application states that he has been falsely implicated in the case and that the victim is trying to malign his image. The six boys, accused of raping the TISS student, never thought that the girl would complain to the police about being sexually abused. In fact, during their interrogation, the three boys - who have been in police custody since last week, said that the girl behaved so normally after the incident that they didn''t think she would file a police complaint. They were so emboldened that they even gave the girl a contraceptive pill after the rape, and the fact that she consumed it without saying anything, assured them that she was not going to file a police complaint, a Trombay police officer disclosed. The victim had gone partying with her hostel-mate, Annie Brown, and five of Browns male friends on Saturday. The group ate and drank at Deonars Cafe XO, where the victim was allegedly forced to drink beyond her capacity, after which she and the five boys proceeded to Andheri. There, the group crashed at the Seven Bungalows flat of a friend - the sixth accused - identified as a certain Kundan Gohain, who is a student at Rajiv Gandhi Engineering College in Versova. The girl soon fell unconscious and was allegedly raped by the six boys. The boys had decided at Cafe XO itself that they were going to sexually abuse the girl once they reached Andheri. That is why they kept insisting that she drink some more. According to a report, the five boys who accompanied the girl from TISS have been identified as Vinamra Soni (a student at Jai Hind college), Jaskaran Singh Bhullar alias Karan (student at HR College), Hershvardhan (student at Sydenham college), Anish Borkataki (student at SP Jain Management and Research Institute) and Darayaus Colabawala (student at Hinduja college, and whom the victim identifies as Devsi). All the five boys were staying at the International Boys Hostel at Churchgate, the police said. The Trombay police produced the three accused in the Kurla court on Thursday. The court has remanded them to police custody till April 28.
-April 21, 2009

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