In Rajasthan’s Ajmer district, a case of gang rape of an 11th-class girl has come to the fore. The accused, identified as Irfan, lured the victim into the trap of friendship via Instagram through one of his friends. After this, Irfan and his accomplices gang-raped her and began harassing her by threatening to make the video viral. The accused Irfan also extorted Rs 5 lakh from the girl and later demanded Rs 10 lakh.
The police have now registered a case in this matter following the victim’s father’s complaint. The victim’s father told police that his daughter became friends with a girl at the coaching centre in October of 2023. The victim’s friend asked to become friends with Irfan on Instagram. The victim blocked the ID at that moment, but her friend persuaded her to befriend that boy. Then one day, the victim’s Instagram ID password was stolen and started being misused.
The victim was blackmailed using obscene chats made from her Instagram ID and was pressured into a physical relationship. The accused clicked obscene pictures of the victim and used them to extort money after threatening to make the photos viral online. This compelled the victim to steal money from her house and give it to the accused Irfan. Accused Irfan asked the victim to have sex with him when he came to collect money.
In March this year, Irfan demanded ten lakh rupees from the victim leaving her shocked. When her family members asked about the missing cash kept in the home, she disclosed what she had gone through. Subsequently, the victim’s father informed the police that his daughter had been gang raped by five people.
So far in this case, the primary accused, Irfan, his companion Arbaaz, and one other person have been arrested. Arvind Singh, CI of the Christian Ganj police station, stated that this is a serious case with the possibility of several other arrests. The search for the other accused persons is ongoing. Meanwhile, details about the girl who initiated the friendship are being looked into. The investigating officer stated that CO North Rudrapratap Sharma informed them that obscene photos were found on the accused Irfan’s phone adding that these will be forensically examined.
1992 Ajmer Sex Scandal
In 1992, the small town of Ajmer in Rajasthan woke up to a shameful, sordid scandal. The scandal involved hundreds of young girls, some college students while some others were still in school. The news of the scandal broke after a local paper, ‘Navjyoti’ published some nude images and a story that spoke about school students being blackmailed by local gangs.
It all started with Farooq Chishti grooming a female student of Sophia Senior Secondary School and raping her. He took objectionable photographs of the minor and threatened her to introduce other girls to him. Later, those girls were raped and blackmailed as well.
Farooq Chishti was the president of the Ajmer Youth Congress while two other accused, Nafis Chishti and Anwar Chishti were the vice-president and joint secretary respectively of the city Congress unit. In this case, some of the accused were the Chishti Khadims (caretakers) of the Ajmer Dargah.
Further investigations led to 18 men in total being charged in the case and tensions ran high in the town for several days. Most of the accused were Muslims, many from the families of Khadims, and most victims were young Hindu girls.
What followed next was another saga of political influence and administrative incompetence. There are speculations that the matter was suppressed to the point that many witnesses and victims turned hostile, and many details got buried. The witnesses and victims were threatened and blackmailed as well to stop them from coming forward. Some of them turned hostile due to social stigma.
