Teen arrested for woman’s rape
Injury mark on head, unchanged clothes help cops nab accused.
New Delhi: An injury mark on the head, hair colour, wrist watch and his unchanged clothes helped the police crack the Deer Park rape-um-robbery last Saturday.
A 19-year-old boy has been arrested in connection with the incident. Raja, alias Jendal, was picked up from a park early on Tuesday morning, where he was sleeping, said the police. The accused has been sent to 14-day judicial custody.
In her statement the victim had told the police that Raja and his juvenile friend spotted her and her cousin outside Moonshine Pub when they were leaving.
They met the two women at the exit point of Hauz Khas Village to board an auto when Raja’s friend told the victim’s sister that he would help them get a better deal with the auto prices as it was late night.
However, because of the weekend rush, the four were separated from one another in two pairs — the victim with Raja and her cousin with the juvenile.
Along the way, the juvenile convinced the victim’s cousin that the victim would safely reach home while he would accompany her to their residence in another part of South Delhi. He dropped her and left. Meanwhile, the accused took the victim to a secluded spot and raped her twice threatening to kill her, said the police.
“He kept on slapping her till the time she agreed. The victim pleaded for her life after she was raped, but Raja wasn’t letting her leave. Then the victim took the same stone used by Raja to hit her on the right side of his head. For a moment Raja remained unconscious. But within few seconds he regained consciousness and once again overpowered the victim and raped her,” said a senior police official.
Thereafter, Raja took her iPhone and left the spot. The victim later on reached the police post and complained about the incident. After taking clues about the accused, their first challenge was identifying him.
“He could not be identified in the CCTV footages that we had. What we gathered through the victim’s statement and other evidence was that the juvenile applied henna on his hair which turned it to a shade of reddish brown that was not very common. Further, when we scanned the CCTV footage of the place where the victim’s sister was dropped, a white coloured wrist watch was also spotted,” said a police officer.
A beat constable spotted a boy, who had the same hair colour and style and was wearing the same white wrist band, and questioned him. He revealed that he was with Raja, who cleans utensils for several pubs and shops in HKV and is a resident of Arjun Nagar.
But Raja’s phone was found switched off and the iPhone he had robbed from the victim could not be used by him as it was locked. A raid at his house was also unsuccessful as he was not found there.
“On the basis of technical evidence, we decided to carry out a manual surveillance and while looking for him at a park, one team spotted him sleeping on a bench. The clothes he was wearing matched with the description of what the victim had told us. He had not changed his clothes since the day of the incident,” said the officer.