Police on Tuesday arrested two persons in connection with robbery and gang-rape of a minor girl in a duplex at Narsingi nine days ago.
The police were initially clueless in the case, which shook the collective conscience of people and raised questions about their security as the offenders sneaked into the house in the dead of the night and took away the 11-year-old girl. The duo then gang-raped her, barely 200 yards away from the house she was abducted from.
As the traumatised family and the victim, whom the accused beat up badly before violating her, gave different versions, the Narsingi police were not sure whether she was raped on May 14 when the complaint was lodged. The arrested accused, Babloo Paul and Arun Sharma, both aged 20 hailing from Kanpur of Uttar Pradesh, came to the city a few weeks ago. Babloo earlier lived in the city and used to lay tiles in houses. He got addicted to liquor. During a visit to Kanpur, he met Arun and both decided to make quick money by committing offences. The duo came to the city and took shelter in an abandoned hut near a brick kiln in Narsingi.
They surveyed the surrounding localities and decided to break into a house at Kokapet. Around 2 a.m. on May 14, they tried to break into a house in vain and later went up the terrace of an adjacent duplex house using a ladder. It is a recently-developed colony of over 100 open plots each admeasuring 1,000-1,200 square yards. The house owner built a compound wall with two gates. The building was recently painted but the ladder was left there owing to some pending work.
An IT professional took the house on rent and was living with his family. He was sleeping in a bedroom with his wife and four-and-half-a-year-old daughter on the ground floor. In the hall, the girl – daughter of his wife’s sister from Tirupati – was asleep along with the maid.
The offenders entered the house through balcony door which was not bolted from inside. They went downstairs and picked up a MacBook and three mobile phones. Before leaving, one of them took out a bottle from the fridge, but it slipped from his hands that woke up the minor girl.
“The offenders jumped on her. Whipping out a knife, they threatened to kill her if she raised an alarm,” the police said. The duo wrapped her in a blanket and carried her out on their shoulders.
They raped the girl by turns at a secluded place after beating her up for resisting. The girl managed to escape and alerted the watchman of the building. By then, the offenders had disappeared.
Investigators launched a massive hunt and caught them near a toddy compound on Tuesday.
