Four arrested after law student tries suicide over blackmail, repeated gangrape

Four persons were arrested in Visakhapatnam on Wednesday on charges of sexual assault and blackmail of a 20-year-old woman.
According to the police, the accused allegedly sexually assaulted a 20-year-old law student multiple times, and then blackmailed her using the videos they made during those assaults.
The police registered a case against various sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) for offences such as engaging in sexual activity based on false promise of marriage, gang rape, sexual harassment, voyeurism and criminal intimidation, along with Section 76 (A) of IT Act 2000 which concerns with punishment for publishing or transmitting sexually explicit material in any electronic form.
“All four accused (were) arrested and remanded. The victim’s boyfriend (Vamsi) and his three close friends are the accused,” Visakhapatnam police commissioner Shankabrata Bagchi said.
The police said that Vamsi, the primary accused, was in a relationship with the law student for over a year. The pattern of sexual harassment and assault, according to the police, began in August, when Vamsi took the woman to a friend’s room in Visakhapatnam’s Krishna Nagar region and raped her.
The other three accused reportedly filmed the act, the police said.
Vamsi, who kept promising to marry her, and the other three repeatedly harassed her, asking for sexual favours in exchange for not circulating the video in public.
The law student, unable to bear the constant harassment and threats, tried to kill herself on Monday, but was saved by her father.
She then shared her ordeal with her family who took her to the police station.
Subsequently, a case was registered and the four were arrested.