"Later we arrested the kingpin of the gang from Tamil Nadu. He confessed to the crime, and admitted that his gang had targeted more than 30 newly wed girls for robbery and rapes. Nobody had reported these incidents out of social shame or fear. Now we are trying to identify all the other members of this gang of rapists", said Ramakrishna.
According to police records only 16 of these cases are recorded. In the other alleged cases, the victims appeared not to have filed complaints.
The gang would corner couples in secluded places, rob them and rape the women. In one case they alleged to have even filmed the rape and threatened the couple of reporting the crime.
The couples they attacked were either secret lovers, both married and unmarried, or engineering and other college students. There were also some sex workers among those allegedly raped.
They were arrested when one couple, whom they attacked, raised an alarm last week. The man struck back and injured one gang member, and the woman cried loudly for help.
The gang operated in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.
All the nine have a criminal past.
According to Chittoor additional SP Annapoorna Reddy, Velayan alias Manigandan, 27, Murugan alias Kasi, 29, Raghavan alias Venkatesh, 30, Govindasamy alias Krishna, and Bommi from Tamil Nadu and Ramireddy, Sake Rajender, Prathap and Vijay Kumar from Chittoor were nabbed by a special team. The team consisted of 150 policemen who went after these rapists.
