Hardoi:

A man has been arrested for allegedly trying to rape his eight-year-old niece and then killing her when she started screaming in a village of this district, a senior police official said on Sunday.

Additional Superintendent of Police Martand Prakash Singh said that on June 19, the girl’s body was found covered with leaves in a sugarcane field in the Tariyawan police station area.

The victim’s father had lodged a case of murder against a youth of the same village, police said.

However, when police started the investigation, the role of the girl’s uncle was found suspicious, Prakash Singh said, adding that the uncle confessed to the crime during questioning.

The minor’s uncle told police that at the time of the incident, he was drunk and finding the girl alone, he tried to rape her. When the girl started screaming, he strangled her, the additional SP said.

Prakash Singh said that the accused has been arrested and sent to jail by a local court.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Bhopal:

An attempt to kidnap a 22-year-old woman during her wedding has shockwaves in Madhya Pradesh’s Ashok Nagar. The main accused, identified as Kalu alias Salim Khan allegedly raped the woman, defamed her with a video and later attacked her family when she was marrying another man.

The incident occurred around 6 pm when Kalu, along with accomplices Jodha, Sameer, and Shahrukh, stormed the woman’s house. When she protested, they assaulted her family, breaking her father’s leg and her brother’s arm. Her mother was also brutally beaten. The attackers, waving swords and iron rods, dragged the woman out of her house.

As the family and the woman screamed for help, a crowd gathered. Initially, the accused threatened the onlookers but fled the scene as the crowd grew larger, leaving the woman behind. During the chaos, the accused also threatened both the woman’s family and the family of the man she was engaged to.

The police were initially reluctant to register the case. It was only after intervention from workers of a local Hindu outfit late on Wednesday night that the police registered cases based on complaints from both the woman and her father.

New Delhi:

A 36-year-old woman was allegedly raped and blackmailed by a property dealer in south Delhi’s Mehrauli area, police said.

A case under section 376 (rape) of the Indian Penal Code was registered on Tuesday following a complaint by the woman, a resident of Mehrauli. The 38-year-old accused identified as Rahul has been arrested, police said.

In her complaint, the woman alleged that she wanted to buy a flat and came in contact with Rahul. They had been friends for the last one and a half years.

“She said Rahul raped her on several occasions,” said a senior police officer said.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Plabennec, France:

Aimee Dupre had always kept silent about the rape of her mother by two American soldiers after the Normandy landings in June 1944. But 80 years after the brutal assault, she finally felt it was time to speak out.

Nearly a million US, British, Canadian and French soldiers landed on the Normandy coast in the weeks after D-Day in an operation that was to herald the end of Nazi Germany’s grip on Europe.

Aimee was 19, living in Montours, a village in Brittany, and delighted to see the “liberators” arrive, as was everybody around her.

But then her joy evaporated. On the evening of August 10, two US soldiers — often called GIs — arrived at the family’s farm.

“They were drunk and they wanted a woman,” Aimee, now 99, told AFP, producing a letter that her mother, also called Aimee, wrote “so nothing is forgotten”.

In her neat handwriting, Aimee Helaudais Honore described the events of that night. How the soldiers fired their guns in the direction of her husband, ripping holes in his cap, and how they menacingly approached her daughter Aimee.

To protect her daughter, she agreed to leave the house with the GIs, she wrote. “They took me to a field and took turns raping me, four times each.”

Aimee’s voice broke as she read from the letter. “Oh mother, how you suffered, and me too, I think about this every day,” she said.

“My mother sacrificed herself to protect me,” she said. “While they raped her in the night, we waited, not knowing whether she would come back alive or whether they would shoot her dead.”

The events of that night were not isolated. In October 1944, after the battle for Normandy was won, US military authorities put 152 soldiers on trial for raping French women.

In truth, hundreds or even thousands of rapes between 1944 and the departure of the GIs in 1946 went unreported, said American historian Mary Louise Roberts, one of only a handful to research what she called “a taboo” of World War II.

“Many women decided to remain silent,” she said. “There was the shame, as often with rape.”

She said the stark contrast of their experience with the joy felt everywhere over the American victory made it especially hard to speak up.

– ‘Easy to get’ –

Roberts also blames the army leadership who, she said, promised soldiers a country with women that were “easy to get” to add to their motivation to fight.

The US Army newspaper Stars and Stripes was full of pictures showing French women kissing victorious Americans.

“Here’s What We’re Fighting For,” read a headline on September 9, 1944, alongside a picture of cheering French women and the caption: “The French are nuts about the Yanks.”

The incentive of sex “was to motivate American soldiers”, Roberts said.

“Sex, and I mean prostitution and rape, was a way for Americans to show domination over France, dominating French men, as they had been unable to protect their country and their women from the Germans,” she added.

In Plabennec, near Brest on the westernmost tip of Britanny, Jeanne Pengam, nee Tournellec, remembers “as if it was yesterday” how her sister Catherine was raped and their father murdered by a GI.

“The black American wanted to rape my older sister. My father stood in his way and he shot him dead. The guy managed to break down the door and enter the house,” 89-year-old Jeanne told AFP.

Nine at the time, she ran to a nearby US garrison to alert them.

“I told them he was German, but I was wrong. When they examined the bullets the next day, they immediately understood that he was American,” she said.

Her sister Catherine kept the terrible secret “that poisoned her whole life” until shortly before her death, said one of her daughters, Jeannine Plassard.

“Lying on her hospital bed she told me, ‘I was raped during the war, during the Liberation,'” Plassard told AFP.

Asked whether she ever told anybody, her mother replied: “Tell anybody? It was the Liberation, everybody was happy, I was not going to talk about something like this, that would have been cruel,” she said.

French writer Louis Guilloux worked as a translator for US troops after the landings, an experience he described in his 1976 novel “OK Joe!”, including the trials of GIs for rape in military courts.

“Those sentenced to death were almost all black,” said Philippe Baron, who made a documentary about the book.

– ‘Shameful secret’ –

Those found guilty, including the rapists of Aimee Helaudais Honore and Catherine Tournellec, were hanged publicly in French villages.

“Behind the taboo surrounding rapes by the liberators, there was the shameful secret of a segregationist American army,” said Baron.

“Once a black soldier was brought to trial, he had practically no chance of acquittal,” he said.

This, said Roberts, allowed the military hierarchy to protect the reputation of white Americans by “scapegoating many African-American soldiers”.

Of the 29 soldiers sentenced to death for rape in 1944 and 1945, 25 were black GIs, she said.

Racial stereotypes on sexuality facilitated the condemnation of blacks for rape. White soldiers, meanwhile, often belonged to mobile units, making them harder to track down than their black comrades who were mostly stationary.

“If a French woman accused a white American soldier of rape, he could easily get away with it because he never stayed near the rape scene. The next morning, he was gone,” Roberts said.

After her book “What Soldiers Do: Sex and the American GI in World War II France” appeared in 2013, Roberts said the reaction in the US was so hostile that the police would have to regularly check on her.

“People were angry at my book because they didn’t want to lose this ideal of the good war, of the good GI,” she said. “Even if it means we have to keep on lying.”

AFP was unable to obtain any official comment from the US Department of Defense on the subject.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Pune:

The Sessions Court in Pune on Friday sentenced a 24-year-old man to death for the rape and murder of a six-year-old girl in Maval Taluka of Pune district.

In August 2022, the girl, aged six years, was playing in the courtyard of her house when the accused, a resident of Kamshet in Maval Taluka, kidnapped her, raped her, and slit her throat. The girl’s body was found the next day in the accused’s backyard.

The mother of the accused was also sentenced to 7 years imprisonment for hiding evidence and not reporting the incident to the police.

During the investigation, both the accused had confessed to the crime but later pleaded not guilty after a chargesheet was filed in the court by the police.

According to Public Prosecutor Senior Advocate Rajesh Kavediya, during the trial, the prosecution submitted that “on the basis of all evidence brought on record, the prosecution has proved beyond reasonable doubt that the accused kidnapped the deceased girl while she was playing in the courtyard, took her to his home, committed aggravated sexual assault on the deceased, and murdered her brutally by cutting her throat.

“The accused thereafter attempted to hide the dead body by burying it in a pit below a tree behind his house. His mother had hidden the clothes and articles on the person of the deceased to protect her son from punishment, and so both accused should be convicted,” Mr Kavediya added.

He further submitted that, “The accused is a sex maniac, obsessed with uncontrolled, relentless sexual thoughts and addicted to viewing child pornography.”

Mr Kavediya expressed his gratitude towards the court for conducting a speedy trial.

The case came to trial around October 2022, and 29 witnesses were examined in just 8 months after the chargesheet was filed.

Reacting to the court order, Defense Lawyer Advocate Yashpal Purohit said, “I welcome the judgment given by the honorable court, but the defense will be moving to a higher court to seek the legal remedies available to the accused.”

The Sessions Court, in its order, stated that, “The present crime seems to be one of the most heinous, brutal, and barbaric acts by a sexually obsessed and hardened cruel person.”

The trial was conducted by Additional Sessions Court Judge BP Kshirsagar of Pune Sessions Court.

The incident occurred in August 2022. The case was registered at Kamshet Police Station under Pune Rural Police, and the conviction came in approximately one year and seven months.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Deoria, UP:

A 14-year-old boy was apprehended on Tuesday for allegedly raping a four-year-old girl in a village of this Uttar Pradesh district, police said.

Deoria Superintendent of Police Sankalp Sharma said the incident took place on Monday evening when the girl was out grazing goats.

On learning about the incident, her family members took her to the community health centre in Gauri Bazar from where she was referred to the Maharshi Devraha Baba Medical College in Deoria, the SP said.

Based on complaint lodged by the minor’s family on Tuesday, the police apprehended the accused teenager and sent him to a juvenile home, he added.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Palestinian group Hamas launched a large-scale surprise attack on Israel from Gaza leaving hundreds dead. A large number of Israeli soldiers and civilians, especially women, are also being held hostage by Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Some are alive and some are presumed dead, military spokesman Lt Col Jonathan Conricus said, BBC reported. 

The official account of Israel War Room, a nonprofit organisation, took to X to share pictures of women and men kidnapped by Hamas amid war. 

”Hamas seems to have kidnapped mostly women. It has already been confirmed that Hamas fighters are using rape as a weapon of war. There must be no mercy for these barbarians,” they wrote on X, along with images of missing Israelis. 

Here’s the tweet:

Hamas seems to have kidnapped mostly women.

It has already been confirmed that Hamas fighters are using rape as a weapon of war.

There must be no mercy for these barbarians. https://t.co/ICTubV3k0B

— Israel War Room (@IsraelWarRoom) October 7, 2023

Several Israelis have also been sharing photos of friends and family who they say have apparently been kidnapped by Hamas fighters. Relatives of those missing have been asked to hand their belongings to police stations so that DNA samples can be taken.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Hamas was responsible for the hostages’  well-being and Israel would “settle the score with anyone who harms them”.

The number of Israeli nationals held captive by Hamas is “unprecedented”, IDF spokesman Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus told CNN. “These are extremely disturbing scenes for any Israeli to see. I don’t even want to imagine what the fate of this Israeli person will be at the hands of these blood-thirsty animals,” he added. 

Meanwhile, a Hamas spokesman claimed that the number of Israeli hostages taken is ”many times greater than what Netanyahu thinks.”

Earlier, shocking footage of a 25-year-old woman being kidnapped from a peace festival by Hamas fighters surfaced on the internet. The distressing video showed Noa Argamani pleading for her life while sitting on the back of a fighter’s motorcycle. In the video, Ms Argamani was forcibly being driven away by gunmen as she screamed, ”Don’t kill me! No, no, no.”  Her boyfriend Avi Nathan was also seen being manhandled by the Hamas group, reported the New York Post. 

Israeli security forces are now carrying out operations to rescue the hostages. Israel’s health ministry has not confirmed how many people have died, but Israeli media put the number of people killed at 300. More than 1,860 others have been injured.

Bareilly, UP:

A 60-year-old man allegedly raped a five-year-old girl and later hanged himself in a village in Uttar Pradesh’s Bareilly district, police said on Friday.

The incident took place in a village under the Faridpur police station limits, they said.

A case was registered against Sher Mohammad under sections of rape and the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, police said.

A police offer said the girl was found soaked in blood and she was immediately taken to the district hospital.

The survivor’s family members said she was playing outside the house. They began searching for her when she did not return home for long.

They said upon reaching Mohammad’s house, they saw him forcing himself on the minor.

The accused fled the spot after seeing the girl’s family members, police said.

An FIR was registered against the accused based on the complaint of the girl’s mother.

The police officer said the accused was found hanging from a tree when the police launched a search operation to find him.

Prima facie it appears that Mohammad, fearing the police action or out of remorse, hanged himself from the tree, he said.

The body was sent for post-mortem, police said.

Noida:

The owner of a private school in Greater Noida was arrested for allegedly raping a teacher on the institute premises, police said on Wednesday.

The teacher alleged that the school owner sexually assaulted her for the first time in February and also made a video recording of the episode. He used the recording to blackmail her and repeatedly raped her over the course of time, the police said.

“The owner of the school in Sector Sigma 2 had called the teacher to his office on the pretext of some important work while she was in the school for routine duty. He then sexually assaulted her,” a police spokesperson said.

“Recently the teacher confided her ordeal to her husband after which the couple decided to approach the police and reported the matter at the local Sector Beta 2 police station last week,” the official said.

An FIR was lodged on September 29 under sections 376 (rape) and 507 (criminal intimidation by anonymous communication) of the Indian Penal Code and searches were launched to arrest the accused, the police said.

On Tuesday, the accused was intercepted near the Chuhadpur underpass and taken into custody by officers of the Sector Beta 2 police station, they added.

The accused was produced in a local court, which has remanded him in judicial custody, the police said.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Gurugram:

An 8-year-old girl was allegedly raped by her neighbour, the police said on Tuesday.

The accused has been identified and will be arrested soon, they added.

The victim’s mother, in her complaint, said that her daughter on Monday evening returned home crying with blood-stained clothes, the police said.

The minor’s mother said a boy living in the same building allegedly took her daughter to the roof and raped her, the complaint added.

Based on the complaint, an FIR was registered against the accused under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act at the women police station in Sector 51 here, a senior police officer said.

“It is not clear yet if the accused is a minor or an adult. A probe is underway and the accused will be arrested soon,” the officer added.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)