Written by Aditi RajaVadodara | October 11, 2025 02:19 AM IST 4 min readOn the night of October 8, a team of the Gujarat Police set off on an unusual hot pursuit – on board a trawler, tearing through the dark sea. Their chase ended 25 nautical miles deep with the arrest of three men wanted in a case of gangrape.According to the FIR registered at the Navabandar Marine Police station on October 8, the accused, in their 20s, had on October 1 allegedly accosted the victim, a 50-year-old, and gangraped her in a coastal village in Gir Somnath district.The Gir-Somnath Police, after establishing the identities of the accused, visited the village but couldn’t trace them. “We learnt that the accused usually worked as labourers on fishing trawlers. We gathered that they were on two trawlers and would have been at sea for over two days before we began looking for them. We decided to chase them down but we had to be discreet and ensure they were not alerted,” says Inspector N N Rana, who led the operation.After receiving a go-ahead from the Gir-Somnath Superintendent of Police Jaydeepsinh Jadeja, Rana dispatched two teams of marine police personnel to the sea. To ensure the accused did not escape, the police hit upon an idea: citing bad weather, they relayed a message to all the trawlers in the vicinity of the ones they were tracking to return to the shore. The message was entirely believable – a warning for Cyclone Shakthi had been issued just days earlier.As the trawler with two of the accused turned around, the team of police personnel intercepted the vessel mid-sea and took them into custody. A second team took the third accused into custody from another trawler.“Although we had cited bad weather and told the trawlers to turn around, we did not want to risk the men jumping off into the sea. Which is why we had to meet them at sea,” says Rana.“They were taken into the police boat from the intercepted trawler while still in the waters. This was to ensure that they had no chance to escape. It is for the first time in the history of the Gujarat Police that we have searched and tracked down accused at sea… 25 nautical miles into the sea is a long distance away from the coast,” said SP Jadeja.Story continues below this adOn October 10, in the remand application filed in the court of the Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate at Una, while seeking police custody of the three accused, police said the woman was raped allegedly by the three accused between 6.30 pm on October 1 and 4 am on October 2.According to the police, the three men, who were allegedly riding two motorcycles, accosted the victim while she was walking down a street in the village and offered to drop her home. But after she got on to one of the motorcycles, the accused allegedly rendered her unconscious and took her to the home of one of the accused, where they took turns to rape her. The victim, who returned home on October 2, approached the police after an acquaintance, who was at sea at the time of the incident, returned to the village and urged her to file a complaint.On Friday, the court granted the Gir Somnath police a three-day remand of the three accused.Stay updated with the latest - Click here to follow us on Instagram© The Indian Express Pvt LtdTags:Gir Somnath district