The Delhi Police on Thursday registered a complaint against unidentified men for allegedly thrashing three Jawaharlal Nehru University students, including a woman, on August 14. The accused also threatened the female student with rape, according to the complaint.

The incident took place when the students were returning from Bharadwaj Lake area in Haryana’s Surajkund, the police said.

Around 9 pm on August 14, a group of men stopped the three students while they were heading back to the JNU campus on a motorbike. The woman told the police that the men began to question them about how they were related to each other, and why they had come to a secluded area. The accused then thrashed the students with sticks, and also allegedly hurled communal slurs at one of them, who they identified as Muslim.

In the complaint, the woman claimed the assaulters threatened to rape her and also wanted to kill her friends and dump their bodies in the lake, but a group of people came to their rescue. She further said that they approached the police on reaching the Delhi-Haryana border, but they, too, had passed lewd remarks at them.

A senior police officer told Scroll.in that the accused have been booked for criminal assault, wrongful confinement, criminal intimidation, remarks to “outrage the modesty of a woman”, sexual harassment and attempted abduction.