Over a week after a woman was gang-raped and her six-month-old daughter murdered in Manesar, the Gurugram Police on Wednesday claimed to have cracked the case with the arrest of two of the accused. Another accused in the case has been identified but is absconding, said the police.
Gurugram Police Commissioner Sandeep Khirwar said that one of the accused, Yogender, was arrested from a hideout in Gurugram. Another accused, Amit, was arrested a few hours later from the city. Mr. Khirwar said that efforts are on to arrest the third accused, identified as Jai Kesh.
‘First boarded truck’
All three men belong to Bulandshahr in Uttar Pradesh and had recently migrated to Gurugram where they were staying in the victim’s village in Manesar, said Mr. Khirwar. He said that the accused had confessed to having committed the crime along with his accomplices and corroborated the sequence of events as told by the victim.
After a fight with the neighbours, the victim had left her home to go to her parents’ place around 11:30 p.m. on May 29. She first boarded a mini-truck from outside her village but got down from the vehicle after travelling for a few hundred metres suspecting the intentions of the driver.
She then boarded an auto-rickshaw, which already had two male passengers apart from the driver. They first drove towards her parents’ village, but suddenly took a U-turn and changed the route. They parked the vehicle at a secluded place in Manesar and allegedly took turns to rape the woman.
Mr. Khirwar said that the post-mortem report has revealed that the infant died due to asphyxia and the police investigation suggests that all three accused had a role in smothering her.
Accused inebriated
“Almost three hours after the accused fled the spot leaving the woman and daughter behind, the victim reached her parents’ home and took her daughter to a hospital in Gurugram. Though the infant was declared brought dead, the woman took her child to a hospital in Delhi by Metro hoping against hope,” said Mr. Khirwar. The accused were inebriated at the time of committing the crime, he added.
“The arrest was made possible with human and technical intelligence. We got some leads from the closed-circuit television camera footage as well,” said the Commissioner.
SI suspended
Meanwhile, a woman Sub-Inspector has been suspended for dereliction of duty in the case and a departmental probe has been ordered against her. Mr. Khirwar said that there was some delay on the part of the officer in registering a case of rape when the woman approached the police two days after the incident, adding that necessary action was taken after the matter came to the notice of the senior officers.
Initially, the police had registered a case of murder and molestation as the woman did not reveal that she was raped. On June 3, she again approached the police alleging that she was gang-raped and the relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code were then added to the FIR.
The woman purportedly told the police that she was in a state of shock following the death of her daughter and could not reveal her ordeal initially.
Following this, the Gurugram Police on Tuesday constituted a Special Investigation Team for investigation into the case. They also released sketches of the three accused.
