Tihar inmate raped by constable on train

The constable is a member of the Delhi Armed Police (DAP), which is the Delhi Police wing that escorts prisoners to and from court hearings

A woman prisoner taken to West Bengal for a court hearing earlier this month was raped in the toilet of a moving train by a Delhi Police constable who was part of the team escorting her, according to a complaint filed at the New Delhi Railway Station police station on Monday.

A senior police officer said on condition of anonymity that a case of rape and criminal intimidation has been registered against the policeman under Section 376 and 506 of the Indian Penal Code, respectively. (Vipin Kumar/HT FILE PHOTO)

The alleged rape took place on August 3 in a sleeper coach of the Nandan Kanan Express while the prisoner was returning to Delhi after taking part in the court hearing in Murshidabad. The following day, the 42-year-old woman told the doctor in New Delhi’ s Tihar Jail about the incident.

The constable is a member of the Delhi Armed Police (DAP), which is the Delhi Police wing that escorts prisoners to and from court hearings.

The male constable and two woman constables had taken the woman to West Bengal for her to be produced in court.

As soon as the woman informed the jail doctor on Sunday afternoon about the incident, she was referred to a government hospital in west Delhi for a medical examination that confirmed rape, a Tihar jail spokesperson said.

The woman told the police in her statement that though she was escorted to the train’s toilet by the two policewomen, the male constable, who was in charge of the escort team, asked the two to return to their seats, and offered to guard the lavatory. The woman alleged the male officer then forced his way in and raped her.

A senior police officer said on condition of anonymity that a case of rape and criminal intimidation has been registered against the policeman under Section 376 and 506 of the Indian Penal Code, respectively. “We have started a probe,” he added.

This is the second case of a Delhi police personnel being accused of rape in the past two months. On July 20, a 14-year-old girl, working as a domestic help at a head constable’s house in Mundka in west Delhi, alleged that he had raped her when no one else was at home. The matter is under investigation, and the suspect is in police custody.

The number of rape cases across the city had already crossed 1,185 this year between January 1 and July 15. In 2018, Delhi recorded a total of 2,135 rape cases -- an average of nearly six a day.