Mumbai: Following the arrest of all five accused in the Mumbai gang-rape case, the police have now launched a hunt for the mobile phone that was used to take pictures of the victim after she was sexually assaulted.
The 22-year-old photojournalist, working as an intern with an English magazine, was gang-raped in the premises of the defunct Shakti Mills compound where she had gone along with a male colleague on an official assignment to shoot pictures on August 22.
Reports quoted police as saying that the missing phone belonged to one of the accused Mohammed Kasim Hafiz Shaikh alias Kasim Bengali, 21, who has been described as "the most depraved" of the lot.
The police told a court yesterday that Bangali was not co-operating and has refused to disclose where he has hidden the phone. Bengali, a resident of Agripada in central Mumbai, is in police custody till August 30.
Other reports, meanwhile, said the phone belonged to Salim Ansari, who was arrested from Delhi by the Crime Branch sleuths yesterday. He is being brought to Mumbai and is expected to be produced before the court today for remand.
Reports said Ansari, who was arrested from Bharat Nagar in North-West Delhi, sold off the mobile phone in Delhi as he was running out of cash.
As per police, the accused had tied up the victim's colleague at a little distance away from the scene of the crime and gang-raped her after threatening her with a broken piece of a beer bottle which they placed near her neck. They shot pictures of the act and warned the victim not to disclose it to anyone or else the pictures would be circulated.
All five accused have been booked under various sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) such as 376(D) (rape), 342 (wrongful confinement), 506(2) (criminal intimidation) and 34 (common intention).
