For close to a month, the Delhi Police have been trying to locate a pair of blood-stained gloves as a last-ditch attempt at “proving their commitment to save the life” of the 23-year-old physiotherapist who was gang-raped. The woollen pair of gloves, sources claimed, was worn by the PCR attendant who had lifted the victim off the road below the Mahipalpur flyover and into a PCR van on the fateful evening.

Oozing with blood and grime, he mistakenly discarded them as the van carrying the victim proceeded to Safdarjung Hospital.

“Her medical condition was evidently precarious and these were discarded somewhere on the route and her statement was being recorded,” said an officer.

“Though it wasn’t done deliberately — or in order to destroy a crucial chunk of evidence —we simply hadn’t anticipated that her friend would start pointing fingers at us and falsely claim that seeming disgust would restrict us from even picking a victim off the scene of crime.”

The victim’s friend, in several television interviews over the last week, had claimed that personnel manning the PCR van that transported them to Safdarjung Hospital on the evening of December 16 had ‘refused to even touch her because they didn’t want their hands to get dirty’.