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Uttarakhand rape-murder case: SIT recovers nurse’s mobile from tempo driver in UP
The arrested tempo driver told the police that the accused Dharmendra Kumar had given him the mobile to keep it with him
The Uttarakhand police’s Special Investigation Team (SIT) has recovered the mobile phone of the 33-year-old nurse, who was allegedly raped and murdered on July 30, from the Bareilly area of Uttar Pradesh and arrested a tempo driver from whose possession the phone was recovered, officials said on Monday.
Manjunath TC, senior superintendent of police (SSP), US Nagar said on Monday. “We have recovered the nurse’s mobile from Bareilly on Sunday. Police had been searching the mobile since her body was found on August 8. SIT had taken the accused Dharmendra Kumar to recover the nurse’s mobile but failed. Two days ago, SIT found the nurse’s mobile phone active and started its surveillance. Police nabbed a man from Bareilly for using the mobile. The nabbed man was identified as Bihari Lal, a resident of Shahi town in Bareilly. He is a tempo driver. He told the police that the accused Dharmendra Kumar had given him the mobile to keep it with him for some days. When he didn’t return to get the phone, he put his SIM in it and started using it”.
The SSP said the tempo driver has been booked under Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) Section 317 (receiving stolen property). “We are also investigating whether the tempo driver had any information about the crime”, he said.
The SIT had earlier recovered the mobile phone of the victim’s daughter which she was carrying in her handbag after it was repaired in the market. The victim’s own phone had not been recovered.
The Uttarakhand police on August 20 constituted a special investigation team (SIT) to investigate the alleged rape and murder of a 33-year-old nurse hailing from the Rudrapur area of US Nagar district on July 30.
On August 13, the US Nagar police arrested a man from the Jodhpur area of Rajasthan for allegedly raping and murdering the nurse near the Uttarakhand-Uttar Pradesh border on the UP side, while she was returning home. The accused, identified as Dharmendra Kumar (28) of Bareilly in Uttar Pradesh, a daily wage labourer, allegedly raped the woman, and later strangulated her with a scarf and fled away with the victim’s mobile phone and ₹3,000 kept in her purse.
According to police, the 33-year-old woman used to work as a nurse in a private hospital on Nainital Road in the Rudrapur area of US Nagar. She went to work on July 30 but didn’t return home. The next day, her sister filed a missing complaint at Rudrapur police station as she hadn’t come home the previous night. Later her body was recovered near a colony in the Bilaspur area of UP near the Uttarakhand-UP border on August 8.
The body was identified but her purse and mobile phone were missing. Rudrapur police started an investigation into the matter and found her mobile phone’s location in the Jodhpur area of Rajasthan. Police reached Jodhpur and tracked the man. He was identified as Dharmendra Kumar of Shahi in Bareilly district. He is a daily labourer. During questioning the accused revealed that finding the nurse alone on July 30, he looted her, raped her and strangulated her to death.
