18 YEAROLD GIRL ‘RAPED’ IN KURUKSHETRA’S LADWA TOWN

KURUKSHETRA: An 18-year-old girl was allegedly raped by a 24-yearold youth in a marriage palace on the outskirts of Ladwa town of Kurukshetra district.

The accused, Sumit Kumar of Nawarsi village in the district and marriage palace watchman Nathi Ram (70) were arrested and the police said that the investigation was going on.

As per the complaint filed by the victim’s father, a resident of Ladwa, his daughter, a Class 12 student did not go to school on January 16.

When her father came to know about it, he scolded her and she left the house in the evening. The accused, who runs a tea shop near the marriage palace, noticed the girl and took her on his bike to the palace and raped her on the intervening night of January 16 and 17. Thenextday,theaccusedsent her to his sister’s house in Chandigarh but later she returned and disclosed the incident to her family members.

The watchman Nathi Ram was arrested for allegedly helping the youth by providing him a room in the marriage palace.

Ladwa police station in-charge Surinder Kumar said the youth has been booked under Sections 376 and 365 of the IPC whereas the watchman was booked under Section 120-B of the IPC.

HOW COPS WENT WRONG The police did not swing into action for three days until their Jind counterparts recovered the body of the Class-10 girl near a canal at Jind’s Budhakhera village on January 12. Hours after she did not return home from her tuition classes, her father accused the police of inaction. “Had the police responded timely, my daughter would have been alive,” he had said.

Not only this, the police initially suspected Gulshan (18) of raping and murdering the girl and launched a hunt for him and detained about a dozen people from his family and school circle for interrogation.

But the police theory fell flat

PROBE FROM SCRATCH After Gulshan’s body was recovered, the police released his family members and friends who were suspected of allegedly helping him. The investigation team has revisited the spot where the girl’s body was found and is talking to more people at Jind’s Budhakhera and Kurukshetra’s Jhansa to get some lead.

Gulshan’s autopsy report suggests drowning as the main cause of his death, thus the possibility of suicide cannot be ruled out. But forensic experts, who conducted postmortem on the girl’s body, said she was murdered, putting a question mark on another police theory that they might have committed suicide after a failed love affair.