The Rachakonda police in Hyderabad arrested five people on Sunday for the alleged gang-rape of a tribal woman and for the physical assault of her husband, tied up in an adjacent room, at a poultry farm last week.
The police said that nine other people, the 'village elders' who attempted to coerce the survivor to strike a deal with the alleged rapists and 'settle' the issue, were also arrested.
The woman and her husband were migrant labourers and were employed with a poultry farm owned by an individual named Prasanth Reddy. The police had earlier said that the couple had received salaries only for two months and after they demanded that their pending dues be paid, it resulted in a tiff.
The police said that the couple, started feeding the hens lesser and started selling remaining bags of poultry feed to other farms, colluding with one Suresh, and this had come to the notice of Prasanth Reddy. Suresh was also beaten up by the accused.
The main accused were identified as Mucha Prasanth Reddy (30), Mucha Anil Reddy (26), R Bharath (26), Devarshetty Pavan Kumar (29), C Hanmanthu (25).
Nine others, Ravinder, Venkat Reddy, Jatavath Ravinder, Charalapally Yadaiah, Jarpula Raju, Baygari Suresh, Anugu Lokesh, Vijay Kumar, Mucha Janardhan Reddy were held, while another accused Chandrashekar Reddy, is absconding. The police said that the 10 accused had attempted to settle the matter out of court.
The police said that the main accused approached these 10 men and asked them to forcibly compromise the issue as well as they settle the matter.
"During the process, the men asked the main accused to pay the woman, her husband and Suresh an amount of Rs 2,50,000, so that she would not lodge a complaint against them," the police press note stated.
"The men then took the survivor and her husband to Harshaguda village and held a panchayat to compromise the issue and they took signatures by forcibly threatening, wrongfully confining and extorting the survivors," the police added.
The police, who have booked the main accused under charges of gang-rape and sections of the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, said that the remaining accused had been booked under Section 365 (Kidnapping), 342 (Wrongful confinement), 330 (Voluntarily causing hurt to extort confession), 506 (Criminal intimidation) and other relevant sections of the IPC.