Hanwella Police has arrested eight youth in connection with the alleged gang-rape of a 16-year-old female student in Jalthara area in Hanwella.
The Police said that the arrested suspects are between the ages of 19 and 21 and are residents of Nawagamuwa, Embulgama area and they were arrested on the charges of raping the girl and aiding and abetting in the act.
Police said that among these suspects is a youth identified as the girl’s boyfriend.
Deputy Inspector General Renuka Jayasundara said that a full investigation has been started regarding this incident. The victim 16-year-old schoolgirl residing in Kosgama had gone to a dansela with her aunt on Poya day morning.
Police said that it was revealed that she told her aunt that she was going to a bookstore and asked a friend for Rs.300 and had gone to meet her boyfriend.
It has also been revealed that she went to her boyfriend’s house and had sex with him, and then the boyfriend dropped the girl on his motorcycle at Ambulgama area and called two of his friends and told them to talk to his girlfriend and take her to a location they like.
Accordingly the two friends had come on a motorcycle, talked to the girl in question, and had taken her to the Jalthara cemetery which is under construction and had sex with her, and then three of their friends also had come and had raped her.Police said that a young man who raped her had brought her to Hanwella Atigala junction and dropped her off.
The Police said that the victim had asked money to go home by bus and the boy who dropped her had given 40 rupees and she had been found by a Police officer standing and crying in the roadside as she did not have enough money for the bus.
After the girl made a statement about the related incident, the Police took her in a three-wheeler to the place where the related incident took place. Police said that the young man who had taken her was sitting near a nearby dansela and the suspect was arrested after she identified him.
Later, during the questioning of the suspect, he had told the Police that the five people who raped the girl were his friends.
The suspects were then arrested by the Police and after referring the student to a medical officer, she was admitted to the Homagama base hospital for treatment.
Meanwhile, another Police team has started an investigation on the instructions of Renuka Jayasundara, Deputy Inspector General of Police in charge of Children and Women’s Bureau. It has also been revealed that the girl in question had been raped by another boyfriend of her in the past and a group of his friends about two years ago. Police is also investigating the related incident.
The eight were produced before the Homagama Magistrate’s Court.
Nethmi Pujani Ratnayake and B.K. Kathriarachchi
