A 19-year-old girl from Ahmedabad that was gang-raped by 4 youths has passed away due to complications that were caused by abortion. The youths raped the girl in 2018 and promised her that they will help her clear her 1st year BCom ATKT exam.

The gang rape happened in June 2018, but a complaint about it was registered on April 13 this year, which was 18 days after the 8-month-old fetus was aborted.

In the complaint, the 19-year-old said that Hardik Shukla, the main accused, promised her that he will help her clear the ATKT exams. Later on, Hardik and his 3 friends took her to a guest house and gang raped her.

The police said that the 19-year-old girl did not share the incident with her parents until she found out that she was pregnant.

She was then brought to a local doctor and was given an overdose of pills with the hopes of aborting the baby.

The police arrested the accused youths on Thursday.

DCP Akshayraj Makwana said that Ankit Parekh and Chirag Vaghela were both arrested on Friday, Raj, another accused person has been arrested by the police.

Hardik Shukla, the main accused person in the gang rape is currently on the run, he is believed to be hiding in Pune and Goa.

The 4 youths are said to be linked to a student wing of a political party.

The DCP added that the fetus will be used to match the DNA samples that were taken from the accused youths. The police were in touch with the doctors who treated the 19-year-old girl.

The DCP added, “We took their DNA samples and conducted an identification parade before the girl, but she was not in a proper mental state to identify them.”

A senior police official added, “The victim had taken overdosed on pills meant to abort the pregnancy. This led to complications which damaged her kidneys. After battling the complications for more than a month, she succumbed on Thursday.”

Dr. M M Prabhakar said that the cause of the death was a renal failure and a blood infection called septicemia.

She developed blood infection and other complications due to the unsupervised abortion by taking too many pills.

A Senior Inspector of the Ramol Police Station said, “After taking the pills, the girl’s condition deteriorated and she was rushed to the ICU for treatment.”