The police on Sunday arrested five accused in an alleged gang-rape of a teenage girl inside a Uttarakhand government bus after it arrived at the Dehradun bus stand from Delhi, officials said. According to information provided by Dehradun Senior Superintendent of Police Ajay Singh, the arrested include the driver and the conductor of the government bus. He said the police were informed about the incident on Saturday evening while the incident occurred on August 12.
Soon after getting the information, police swung into action and identified the Roadways bus by scanning CCTV cameras. Subsequently, five accused, including its driver and the conductor, were arrested he said. The accused have been identified as, Dharmendra Kumar (32) and Rajpal (57), both residents of Buggawala in Uttarakhand’s Haridwar, Devendra (52), a resident of Bhagwanpur in Haridwar, Rajesh Kumar Sonkar (38), a resident of Patel Nagar in Dehradun and Ravi Kumar (34), a resident of Nawabganj in Farrukhabad district of Uttar Pradesh.
Bus impounded, forensics on spot
SP Singh said that the accused Dhamendra Kumar is the bus driver and Devendra is the conductor. Ravi Kumar and Rajpal are drivers of other buses while Sonkar is a cashier of the Uttarakhand Roadways posted at the Dehradun bus stand. The bus used in the incident has been impounded by the police and a forensic team was collecting evidence from inside.
How did crime come to light?
As per the police, the incident came to light after the Dehradun Child Welfare Committee (CWC) was informed about a girl sitting on a bench alone at platform number 12 of the Dehradun Interstate Bus Terminal (ISBT) late at night on August 12. For her safety, the Dehradun CWC sent the girl, aged 16-17 years, to Bal Niketan, a government girls’ home where she revealed the ordeal during counselling. She informed the authorities about the alleged rape, following which Pratibha Joshi, a CWC member filed a police complaint on Saturday evening.
Based on Joshi’s complaint, Patel Nagar police registered a case under section 70 (2) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), and the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act. Accordingly, the SSP inspected the area and constituted a special probe team. He also met the victim.
How has investigation evolved?
In preliminary investigation, the girl revealed that she is an orphan and a resident of Punjab. However, she later told the police that she is a resident of Uttar Pradesh’s Moradabad, from where she went to Delhi and then took a bus for Dehradun from Kashmiri Gate ISBT. The Police said the girl kept changing her statements initially, but upon interrogation she gave information about her family.
Police subsequently, contacted the family only to find out that the victim’s parents were alive. The police were also told that the girl had fled her house in the past too without informing anyone. However, each time the family brought her home after getting the information. Nonetheless, SSP Singh said that accused Devendra told the police that he met the girl at Kashmiri Gate when she was seeking information about how to reach Punjab. The conductor suggested she board his bus to Dehradun and then she could take another bus to Punjab.
However, after the bus reached Dehradun and all the passengers got off Devendra and driver Dharmendra allegedly raped her, police said. Ravi and Rajpal, drivers of the buses parked nearby, came to know about this and they also raped her. Devendra also told the police that he went to deposit money and told the cashier Sonkar after which he also raped the girl, according to police.
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