molestation
[Representational Image]Reuters File

The Maharashtra police on Wednesday arrested one of the five men who allegedly stripped, molested and beat a 45-year-old woman at her home in Palghar district's Boisar area over a land dispute.

The incident occurred on Tuesday when the arrested person, along with his accomplices, arrived at the woman's home in Boisar's Dandi Pada village.

They stripped her, dragged her by her hair out of her house to the road and beat her up with sticks, Boisar police station sub-inspector S S Gharat said, quoting from the woman's complaint filed on Wednesday, reports PTI.

She told the police that she had purchased a piece of land from Dhodi in Dandi Pada about six months ago and had refused to give the main accused, Naresh Dhodi, the contract to develop the land. This reportedly made him angry.  

Dhodi has been booked under Sections 354(b) (molestation), 452 (house-trespass after preparation for hurt, assault or wrongful restraint), 143 (unlawful assembly), 147 (rioting), 148, 149, 323 (voluntarily causing hurt), 504 (intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of the peace) and 506 (criminal intimidation) of the IPC, the police said.

The police are now on the look out for others involved in the alleged crime.