By IANS,
Pune : Police said Sunday they hadn’t found any “corroborative evidence” of rape following allegations that a 22-year-old woman employee of a call centre here had been gangraped by around 10 men, including her cab driver.
The call centre employee of IBM has not yet made a statement to police. She was allegedly raped Thursday night and has been in a state of shock since then.
“The statements made by her boyfriend and friends do not corroborate. The victim is in the hospital and we are waiting for her statement, so we should not come to any conclusion hastily,” Superintendent of Police (Rural) Ravindra Kadam told IANS Sunday.
According to her boyfriend, the woman, an employee of IBM Daksh at Phursungi, 16 km from Pune, was gang raped by 10 men, including the driver of the cab which came to fetch her on the night of Thursday-Friday.
But Kadam says that while the boyfriend has alleged rape, the victim’s friends say she was in her apartment at that time.
The incident came to light after a friend visited the woman at a private hospital in Hadapsar here on Friday. The friend, a woman, and the victim’s boyfriend then told police that she had been raped.
The victim was taken to Sassoon Hospital where a police team is stationed to record her statement.
A waiting investigating officer told IANS: “She has been lying in the hospital bed for the last 48 hours, staring blankly at the ceiling.”
The victim’s mother has also arrived from her native village.
Meanwhile Roma Nawani, general manager, corporate communications, IBM Daksh, said: “It’s very unfortunate, we will cooperate with the police investigation.”
This is the second such incident in less than a year in Pune, which of late has become a hub for call centres.
Last November, Jyotikumari Choudhary, a 22-year-old employee of Wipro BPO based in the IT hub Hinjewadi, was allegedly raped and murdered by a car driver and his friends.
The latest incident has yet again brought up the question of whether call centres are following the security measures to ferry female employees.
According to Kadam, “IBM has been following security measures that requires the presence of a security officer besides the driver when a female employee is picked up.”