Pankaj Kumar, a 22-year-old factory worker, was arrested on Saturday for allegedly raping and strangling two minor girls, aged six and eight, according to a report by The Indian Express. DCP (Rohini district) Rishi Pal was quoted by The Indian Express as saying:
He (the accused) was produced before a Delhi Court and sent to 14-day judicial custody.
The Girls Played Dead To Avoid Death
The two girls, who were brought to the hospital in a critical condition, and are still in hospital, had allegedly “played dead”so that their perpetrator would leave, claimed the report.
Dr Puneeta Mahajan, medical superintendent, Dr Baba Saheb Ambedkar Hospital, was quoted by The Indian Express as saying:
The victims were brought in a critical condition. They are now in post-operative care. A team of doctors is monitoring their condition, which is, at present, stable.
The girls, who are neighbours, were raped at around 7:30 pm on Friday, while they were playing outside their homes, said the report. A senior police officer told The Indian Express that the accused had asked the girls to get him a packet of Eno from a store in the vicinity, after handing them a Rs 100 note. After the girls returned, claiming that they couldn’t find the product at the store, the accused allegedly accompanied him to another shop, offering candy as bait.
The Minors Were Lured With Candy
According to the police, the elder sister of one of the survivors had tried to accompany the accused to the shop with the girls but was asked not to. The mother of one of the survivors told The Indian Express:
She asked him to leave her sister alone, but he slapped her. When she started crying, he gave her Rs 5 and asked her to go home. He took the two girls to an isolated park near a canal, about 150 metre from their home. At the park, he raped them and beat them up. When they started crying, he hit them on their faces.
An officer claimed that the accused had dumped the minors into a pit after they stopped resisting his attempts to strangulate them, as he thought them to be dead. Later, one of the survivors told her mother that she had pretended to be dead in order to survive.
The Minors Will Undergo Counselling
When the girls didn’t return home after their play time, their parents made a PCR call and told the police that they were missing, following which the police reached the area and started their search. An officer told The Indian Express:
Around 4.45 am on Saturday, the relatives of the girls started looking inside the park. The father of one of the girls noticed some clothes lying around and started screaming. Suddenly, one of the girls rushed towards him and told him about the other girl. Police then took the girls to a hospital.
The girls were “too scared to talk”and were not able to provide statements to the police, and will be provided counselling. After sometime, the girls told the police that they had “seen the accused around a neighborhood grocery store”, as per the report.
An officer was quoted in the report as saying that the girls “provided a description of the accused, and on the basis of that, police questioned the owner of the grocery store. Police then questioned over a 100 people and eventually traced Kumar, who was found living near the girls’ homes.”
(With inputs from The Indian Express)
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