Woman with memory loss raped: How cops chased ‘forgotten’ details, held suspect
The 38-year-old Delhi woman who has been suffering from memory loss was offered a ride by an Uber driver who was not on duty at the time. He took her to his house
Raped and thrashed, allegedly by an off-duty Uber cab driver, the 38-year-old woman did not want to report the crime to the police. She did not expect anyone to believe her story as she could neither remember the rapist’s identity, nor the address where she was raped. The woman had been suffering from memory loss. But it was her pain, that forced her to visit a hospital and police learnt of the case from the doctors.
“It took less than a minute for the attending doctor to identify that it was a case of sexual assault. The hospital authorities immediately alerted us,” said Nupur Prasad, DCP (Shahdara), who led the investigating police team.
The DCP immediately sent a team to the hospital to interact with the woman minutes after she visited the hospital on Thursday. The 38-year-old victim confided in the police that she had been brutalised, but couldn’t offer any help with the suspect’s name and address. The top Delhi cops of the East district were informed.
All she could say was that she had been picked from Karkardooma Court premises by a man who had offered to help her get a job as a house help as she was desperate for a job. She had been taken in a car on a long drive, but she did not know whether in Delhi or outside it.
The police team, led by a woman officer, urged her to recollect anything that the driver may have mentioned to her. Having lost much of her memory about the crime, she tried hard to recollect before mentioning Gokal Dham Society. She had been taken to the suspected rapist’s home in this locality.
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The police struggled to track this locality. Police sources said they checked east Delhi areas and then the other parts of the national capital for any such neighbourhood before focusing their attention to the neighbouring Noida and Ghaziabad.
One small society named Gokal Dham was found located near the Hindon river in Ghaziabad, said Ravindra Yadav, Joint CP (Eastern Range). Since it was a small society, the police took the victim there to launch a physical search. The woman was soon able to recollect and identify the building in which she had been taken.
Police barged into the house to find Kamal, the 45-year-old rape accused inside. “The rape victim pointed him out to us. We arrested him,” said the DCP.
An Uber spokesperson, meanwhile, said that the company was yet to be contacted by the police. “What’s been described is deplorable and something no one should ever go through. Once approached, we will cooperate with local authorities to support their investigation and proceedings in any way possible,” said the Uber spokesperson.