Man held for raping 4-year-old neighbour in Shahbad Dairy
On the night of Wednesday, the same day his trial began, enraged locals are believed to have set his house on fire as soon as the prosecution heard of the accused raping the minor girl in the past.
A four-year-old girl was raped Wednesday afternoon at Shahbad Dairy in northwest Delhi by a neighbour with promises of a chocolate, police said, arresting the 22-year-old accused in wee hours of Thursday.
The minor girl was raped and, on Wednesday night, locals burned the accused’s house as soon as they got the information.
The suspect had earlier worked at a nearby restaurant, and had been caught from hideout in Shahbad Dairy, said Ravi Kumar Singh, deputy commissioner of police (outer north).
Police said they got a call to their control room at about 9pm on Wednesday from a man who said that he thought his daughter was sexually assaulted.
The girl was later sent to Baba Saheb Ambedkar Hospital for medical examination and counselled by the members of the Delhi commission for women before being handed over to her parents, said the senior police officer speaking on the condition of anonymity.
The victim’s father, aged 35, said she was playing outside her house with other young children about . “At about 2pm, we realised that she was gone. We started searching for her and some children told us that a neighbour pulled her to his house. We couldn’t find any of them,” he said.
The girl came back at about 6pm, the father said. ‘She had two rupees in her hand and said that her neighbour took her away with him, and that he gave her one chocolate’.
Within the next three hours, the girl threw up twice. ‘When we asked her, she said what the neighbour did to her. We informed police. Her Rs 1,000 also went with him. He too dropped her near her house. She herself took us and police to the place where he raped her.’
Police said that a case under section 137(2) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 6/18 of Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act and 3(2) Schedule Caste and Schedule Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act had been registered.
Several parties were formed instantly, several raids were carried out at the alleged places of the accused and he was arrested on Thursday morning. That was the officer he spoke to.
Following the mob’s alleged blazing of the suspect’s home, the victim’s father explained: ‘After coming back from the hospital because of the daha [ritual wounding] we [were told] that the person he [the daha recipient] lived with was so angry and that [he] had burnt out the room in which he lived.