A 17-year-old girl has alleged that three young men gang-raped her in a moving car in Jhansi city and then threw her out on the highway.

Her aunt and father told reporters on Thursday that the police misbehaved with them and took 12 hours to accept their complaint, by when two of the accused had gone into hiding.

“She (the girl) lives in another area of the city under Prem Nagar police station. She had gone out to buy something on Tuesday morning when Sonu Kumar and two other youths dragged her into a car,” police sources quoted from the aunt’s written complaint.

“They kept driving for about 15km and gang-raped her. Later they threw her off the car onto the state highway in Shivapuri area and escaped.”

The distance between the victim’s home and the place where she was thrown off is 17km. The girl reached her aunt’s place, 10km from her own home, five hours after the incident. The aunt said the teen was injured and in shock.

“My niece was barefoot and her clothes were torn. I immediately took her to the police station but they took 12 hours to file an FIR,” she told reporters.

Jhansi superintendent of police Gyanendra Singh said: “We have registered a case based on the complaint and arrested one of the accused. We will act against the (local) policemen if the allegation is found correct.”

Sonu Bhargav, the arrested youth, is a neighbour of the victim and faces other criminal charges too, the police said.

Singh said he had formed a police team to arrest the remaining two suspects. One of them has been identified as Manish Pandey.

The girl’s father said: “Instead of writing the complaint down and immediately catching the criminals, an officer at the police station kept scolding me for not confining my daughter to the house. He said girls shouldn’t be allowed to go out.

“He registered the case only when we started approaching senior police officers. By then, about 12 hours had passed and two accused had escaped.”

He added: “My daughter told me that Sonu had put vermilion on her forehead before throwing her off the car near the Karaundi Mata Temple. She said they had threatened to kill the entire family if we went to the police.”

Sneha Tiwari, circle officer of the Sadar area in Jhansi, said: “We are sending the girl for a medical examination. An investigation is on.”

Life sentence

A special court in Badaun, Uttar Pradesh, on Thursday sentenced a man to life imprisonment and imposed a fine of ₹1 lakh on him for raping his minor tenant in 2019, a lawyer said.

Special judge for the Pocso (Protection of Children from Sexual Offences) Act, Deepak Yadav, pronounced Tejpal Singh guilty of raping the 11-year-old girl, special public prosecutor Pradeep Bharti said.