Two-year-old homeless girl kidnapped, raped in Capital
NEWDELHI: A two-year-old homeless girl was allegedly kidnapped from a footpath in north Delhi’s Kotwali and raped by a 24-yearold vagabond in the nearby railway washing yard during the early hours of Saturday. The child, who was bleeding and had fallen unconscious, was left on the railway tracks, police said.
Ten teams of Delhi Police, which raided various locations across the neighbourhood overnight, arrested the accused, Anil alias Lalu, on Sunday morning. The man has earlier been arrested in Haridwar in a case of theft, police said.
Delhi commission for women chief Swati Maliwal visited the child on Sunday evening.
According to the police, Anil, who hails from Bareilly in Uttar Pradesh, kidnapped the child around 2.30am on Saturday when she was sleeping next to her
mother, a ragpicker. The man took the girl to a secluded spot in the railway’s washing yard and raped her, police said.
“He then left her near a railway track close to the yard and fled. Around 3.30am the child’s mother woke up not finding her daughter by her side. She rushed to her husband, a rickshaw puller, who was sleeping near a gurdwara. After more than three hours of search, when the couple and their friends from neighbourhood could not find the child, they lodged a complaint at Kotwali police station at 10am. The police registered a case of kidnapping under IPC section 363,” said a senior police officer, requesting anonymity.
Meanwhile, a passerby spotted a girl child lying near railway tracks and informed the police at the Old Delhi Railway station. “The police found that the child had been sexually assaulted and took her to Aruna Asaf Ali hospital and Kotwali police station was informed. The police then called the child’s parents and took them to hospital where they identified her as their daughter. A case of rape under IPC 376 and POCSO Act was then registered,” the officer said. Police said that the child had to undergo a surgery but her condition was stable by Sunday evening. She was later shifted to Lok Nayak hospital.
Additional deputy commissioner of police, Jasmeet Singh, said CCTV footage from the place where the child was sleeping were scanned and a man was spotted picking her up around 2.30am. When the footage was shown to locals, they identified him as a vagabond who lives in the neighbourhood, Singh said.
“Ten teams were formed. While five of them scanned CCTV footage to trace the accused, three teams investigated the case and two teams simultaneously raided various locations to nab the suspect. Following overnight searches, we managed to arrest the suspect, Anil, from near a gurdwara. He confessed to have raped the girl. He said he works occasionally as a waiter, ragpicker or a labourer.