Noida rapists to be booked under NSA, Gangster Act

Noida, Jan 7 (IANS) The 10 men charged with gang raping a young woman here will be booked under the stringent National Security Act (NSA) and the Gangster Act, given the gravity of the crime, the police said Wednesday.

'Such heinous acts can't be tolerated in a civilized society. These barbaric acts are no less a threat to the national character and could be committed only by wild gangsters,' Inspector General of Police (Meerut Range) Gurdarshan Singh told IANS.

'Therefore, I have asked my officers to impose the NSA and the Gangster Act on these wild criminals,' he added.

Earlier, the chief judicial magistrate's court remanded five of the 10 rapists who have been arrested to 14 days' judicial custody.

P.N. Singh, the prosecutor in the case, said: 'We requested the court to grant police custody for three days but the court preferred to remand them to judicial custody and adjourned the case till Friday.'

'We wanted the police remand to recover the articles used in the crime. Certain finger prints found on the vehicles were also to be lifted and tallied. Therefore, we submitted a separate application to take the accused into custody exclusively for this purpose, but the court adjourned the hearing till Friday. Now, both applications will be taken up on Friday,' Singh added.

The victim, a management student from south Delhi, had gone with her friend Amit Pawar to the Great Indian Place Mall in Sector 18 market for shopping Monday.

According to the police, the girl and her friend in their WagonR car were returning to their homes in Delhi, when around 10 men intercepted them. They raped the girl after thrashing Pawar.

The men, in their early 20s and residents of Garhi Chaukhandi village in Sector 58, were returning after playing a cricket match. They were riding a Scorpio SUV and two motorcycles.

The police have arrested five of them while five are still absconding.