Barely days after armed bandits waylaid a Noida family on a highway in Bulandshahar district and gang-raped a minor and her mother, yet another gang-rape shook Uttar Pradesh on Tuesday.
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According to The Times of India, prices generally range from 50 to 150 Indian Rupees, which would equal 75 American cents and up to just $2.25 US dollars. They range in length from 30 seconds to as long as five minutes. It’s sold under the table.
Dealers download these videos directly into the customer’s smartphone or put them in pen drive for as less as Rs 150.
Individuals or organised gangs usually download these videos from Twitter, Tumbler or Facebook accounts and sell them. Sometimes, the culprits themselves post the videos online. “It is a matter of time before they go viral”, a shopkeeper told the Times Of India. The report quotes one shopkeeper telling a teenager that he might even know the girl in the latest hottest video.
Several gang rapes have been reported in Uttar Pradesh over the past weeks, and the hashtag #LawlessUP began trending in protest of what many see as the government doing little to stop violence against women and minorities and corruption.
While two of the men raped her at gunpoint, the third clicked photographs of the act.
The media house quotes a senior cop who says that rapists most of the time record their heinous crime on their mobile phones and use the clips as a tool either to blackmail or bully the victims or to stop them from going to the cops.
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The victim came to the police station and said that three men came in a Maruti van and kidnapped her. “Maaf karo, maaf karo (Spare me)”, he is crying. “The girl pleads, ‘At least don’t shoot a video'”. The rate of sexual assaults, rapes in India has become very high since few years and still increasing.
