52-yr-old absconding after 2014 rape of minor in Delhi nabbed
In June 2014, four of the five accused allegedly abducted a 15-year-old girl and gang-raped her for three days, police said.
Police have arrested a 52-year-old man, the last and fifth accused in the alleged abduction and gang rape of a minor in 2014, from west Delhi’s Tilak Nagar, officers said on Thursday.
Officers said they arrested Vinod (single name) on Friday last week — nine years after he went into hiding by cutting off all contact with his family and going off the grid.
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In June 2014, four of the five accused allegedly abducted a 15-year-old girl from central Delhi’s Ranjit Nagar and took her to Gonda in Uttar Pradesh where they gang-raped her for three days, police said. The fifth accused was a woman who had arranged a hideout for them to commit the crime.
While the four other accused in the case were arrested soon after the crime, Vinod was on the run. His arrest came during investigation of a 2020 murder case, in which one of the three other accused was allegedly involved while out on bail.
“In the first five years while being on the run, Vinod entirely cut off ties with his family to such an extent that they believed he was dead. Vinod had even stopped using a mobile phone. He had begun living an anonymous life by ironing clothes at different places,” said Ravindra Yadav, special commissioner of police (crime branch), following Vinod’s interrogation.
Over the last four years, however, Vinod began meeting his wife and children in a clandestine manner. “He would meet his family in Ranjeet Nagar at night to avoid being seen,” said Yadav.
The victim in the case was a school student, whose parents were daily wage labourers. The family used to live in the same neighbourhood as Vinod, who used to iron clothes as a form of livelihood, in Ranjit Nagar. In June 2014, Vinod and his three friends kidnapped the girl from her home, took her to Gonda and raped her for three days.
“While the Delhi Police were investigating her kidnapping, the local police in Gonda rescued her after three days of captivity,” said a police officer, wishing not to be named. Four of the accused were arrested in the next few days. They were identified as Bhagwan Dass, Guffran, Roshan, Rajkumar and Deepmala. More details about the them were not immediately available, police said.
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Police said that since June 2014, Vinod was a proclaimed offender. His arrest came on the heels of a crime branch investigation of the murder of a man in Ranjit Nagar in 2020. “One of the suspects in the murder case was Dass. He was involved in the murder while out on bail,” said the officer, refusing to share more details of the murder case.
“It was during this probe that someone tipped us off about Vinod earning his living in Tilak Nagar area,” said the officer. Vinod was sent to judicial custody, police said.
