Convict on parole hangs himself at police station hours after being arrested for raping a minor girl

Senior police officers said the man hanged himself in a lockup at the Samaypur Badli station, and that the guard deployed outside the cell had been suspended.

Out on parole after being convicted in a case of robbery and murder and another of rape, a 40-year-old man allegedly raped a 14-year-old girl in an outer Delhi locality on Saturday and died allegedly by suicide hours later while in police custody at a station on Sunday.

The man hailed from Bulandshahr in Uttar Pradesh, and lived in Delhi’s outskirts for over two decades. (Getty Images/iStockphoto(Representative Image))

Senior police officers said the man hanged himself in a lockup at the Samaypur Badli station, and that the guard deployed outside the cell had been suspended.

However, the man’s relatives alleged that they saw the police beat him up in the police station on Saturday night, and questioned how he was able to kill himself despite being in police custody.

The man hailed from Bulandshahr in Uttar Pradesh, and lived in Delhi’s outskirts for over two decades.

“In 2005, he was arrested for a robbery and murder case registered in north-east Delhi’s Khajuri Khas. He was convicted in the case, but not before he raped a 10-year-old boy in outer Delhi in 2012. He was convicted in the latter case as well,” said Gaurav Sharma, deputy commissioner of police (outer-north).

He was released on parole on February 2 this year.

His parole was extended due to the pandemic, and he was due to return to jail on October 17, his lawyer Rakesh Kaushik said.

But on Saturday, the man allegedly raped a 14-year-old girl in her home in outer-north Delhi.

“The girl’s mother, a labour worker, was not at home when the incident took place, and her father is no more,” Sharma said.

The girl and her family filed a complaint on Saturday morning, and the police tracked him down based on her description later that evening. He was arrested and booked for rape and under sections of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (Pocso) Act.

The man’s nephew, at whose factory he worked while on parole, said he reached Swaroop Nagar police station with some other relatives around 11.30 pm on Saturday after receiving a call from the police.

“We saw a group of policemen beating him up with sticks and banging his head against the wall. They were also forcing him to drink alcohol. We weren’t allowed to meet him and were shooed away,” the man’s nephew alleged.

DCP Sharma did not respond to these allegations.

Around 9am, the family said they received another call from the police calling them to Samaypur Badli police station. “We were told that my uncle had hanged himself. How did he make arrangements for a suicide in a compound that also houses the DCP’s office,” the nephew asked.

The Samaypur Badli police station, where the alleged suicide took place, operates out of the same compound where DCP Sharma’s office is located.

Sharma said the man had to be shifted from Swaroop Nagar to Samaypur Badli police station because the former does not have a lock up. However, they did not specify when he was transferred.

“We have preserved CCTV camera footage and have suspended the guard who was deployed outside the lock-up,” Sharma said, adding that the metropolitan magistrate has been informed about the development.