Two men allegedly gang-raped a woman and thrashed her boyfriend near a temple in Virar area, near Mumbai, in Maharashtra’s Palghar district, officials said on Thursday.

According to the police, the incident happened at around 5 pm on Wednesday in the forest area near the Jivdani temple in Virar East where the 20-year-old victim and her boyfriend were chatting and sitting alone.

The two accused, identified as 25-year-old Dheeraj Soni and 24-year-old Yash Shinde—both residents of Sainath Nagar locality of Virar, a distant Mumbai suburb—spotted the couple sitting on a hillock near Jivdani temple and tried to extort money from the young lovers after they saw them hugging, said an official.

The official said that the victim’s boyfriend told them he didn’t have any cash on him and instead transferred Rs 500 to the accused men via internet banking, however the men demanded more money and started to beat up the man, adding they also smashed an empty beer bottle on his head.

The accused then stripped the boyfriend naked, tied him to a tree and raped the girl in front of him who could do nothing but helplessly watch the horrific ordeal unfold in front of his eyes.

An official from the Virar police station said the injured boyfriend could not stand up to the attackers as he watched the accused duo take turns raping his girlfriend.

He said that after the brutal rape, the accused men fled the scene with man’s clothes and his mobile father while the petrified rape survivor also fled the spot after she saw her violators departing, leaving her unconscious boyfriend behind.

The injured boyfriend was spotted by locals after he regained consciousness around 6.30 pm and came out of the secluded forest looking for something to cover his naked body. The residents informed the police, who arrived at the spot and took him to a hospital for treatment after which his statement was recorded.

Police team then arrived at his girlfriend’s home where she narrated the horrific ordeal and based on her statement, a case of gang rape, unnatural sex, assault, extortion, threatening against the two accused under sections 376(d), 324, 377, 384, 504, 506 and 34 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), was registered against the accused who were then arrested within two hours of the incident, an official said.

Further investigation is underway, he added.

A 14-year-old boy and a pilot got seriously injured after a glider plane crashed into a residential house in Jharkhand’s Dhanbad on Thursday. The mishap happened at around 4:50 pm shortly after the takeoff from the Barwadda airstrip.

The injured were rushed to the hospital and are undergoing treatment at the Asarfi Hospital. According to the authorities, both of them are critically injured.

The video of the incident is now going viral on social media which shows the cockpit of the glider smashing into a concrete pillar of the house.

Reportedly, the joyride glider, which can carry only 2 people, took off from the Barwadda airstrip, however, it crashed into a home after 500 meters. The mishap tends to be caused due to a technical glitch.

Kush Singh, the injured passenger, is from Patna and had come to his maternal uncle Pawan Singh’s home in Dhanbad. The youngster had taken a joyride in a glider operated by a private company from the Barwadda airstrip. The joyride glider fell on the house of Nilesh Kumar near Birsa Munda Park in Dhanbdad soon after taking off.

Speaking on the incident, ASI SK Mandal of Barwada Police Station said police teams reached the spot as soon as they received the information that a glider crash had happened near Birsa Munda. Two people were injured and said they are further investigating the matter.

Jammu and Kashmir Lieutenant Governor (LG) Manoj Sinha on Thursday courted controversy with his remarks on Mahatma Gandhi, claiming that the Father of the Nation did not have a degree in law or any other subject.

Speaking at a function in Gwalior’s ITM University to mark the Martyr’s Day which falls on March 23, Sinha claimed that Mahatma Gandhi—who worked as a barrister during the apartheid era in South Africa—did not have a degree in law but merely a high school diploma.

Sinha claimed that Gandhi qualified to practice law but did not have a law degree from any university.

The Jammu and Kashmir LG claimed that even though the father of the nation overcame insurmountable odds during his lifetime, some educated people have a “misconception” that he possessed a law degree which is not true and while some people may counter his arguments, he was only speaking facts.

Defending his claims, Sinha asked that not having a degree does not mean that Mahatma Gandhi wasn’t well educated as a University degree is a prerequisite for being educated.

A video of the Lieutenant Governor’s outrageous claims is going viral on social media and has sparked outrage among users with some terming Sinha’s claims as “blatant lies” aimed to defame the nation’s father.

Others have pointed out the fact that a Law degree is mandatory for practicing law and as such Sinha’s claims are purely fabricated having no basis in reality.

Telangana Industries Minister and BRS working president KT Rama Rao took potshots at the BJP over Sinha’s remarks, wondering if the saffron party will next campaign for awarding a Nobel Prize for Nathuram Godse—the man who shot and killed Mahatma Gandhi.

In another jibe at the BJP, he tweeted: “WhatsApp University graduates after all,”.

During recent years, questions have been asked over the education and degrees of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Minister Smriti Irani.

According to Mkgandhi.org, Mahatma Gandhi successfully completed his law degree from University College London (UCL) in three years.