NEW DELHI: Protests over the rape of a five-year-old girl erupted in Delhi on Saturday with people staging demonstrations at various places in New Delhi, including the residences of Congress chief Sonia Gandhi and Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde and Police Headquarters.

Demonstrations were also held at AIIMS where the girl is undergoing treatment and outside the Gandhi Nagar police station where policemen allegedly showed laxity in dealing with the case.

The protests started in the morning with a small crowd at Police Headquarters demanding stringent action against policemen, but as the day progressed, it grew to a few hundreds.

The demonstrators tried to enter the police headquarters at regular intervals by breaking the barricades but a heavy posse of security personnel stationed there prevented them.

Activists of BJP, CPI(M), CPI, AAP, AISF, AIYF, SFI, ABVP and other organisations were part of the protest.

There were protests at AIIMS also. In the afternoon, a group of protesters marched to Shinde’s 2-Krishna Menon Marg residence demanding the sacking of Delhi Police Commissioner Neeraj Kumar. They dispersed later after a memorandum in this regard was submitted to his office.

A group of people from Lok Raj Sangathan and Naya Daur Party also staged a protest outside Gandhi’s residence demanding the sacking of Shinde. — PTI

NEW DELHI: A 22-year-old man was arrested from his in-laws' house in Muzaffarpur in Bihar on Saturday for allegedly raping a five-year-old girl here five days ago with investigators suspecting that he fled the capital within an hour of committing the crime fearing the victim had died.

Manoj Kumar, a labourer in a garment factory in northeast Delhi, was apprehended from Chiknouta village, about 50 km from Patna, at around 2 a.m., Prabhakar, Deputy Commissioner of Police (East), told reporters here.

Kumar told the police during initial interrogation that he fled the house in east Delhi's Gandhi Nagar at around 7 p.m. to catch the 8.30 p.m. Swatantrata Senani Express for his hometown thinking that the girl has died.

Piecing together the sequence, investigators now believe that the girl might have been kidnapped around 6pm and raped and brutally assaulted allegedly by Kumar and he left the place around 7 p.m.

"Kumar told us that he left the house thinking that the girl was dead ... The girl was inside the house for 40 hours," Prabhakar said.

The girl's mother had told the police that the victim, who was playing outside their home, went missing around 6 p.m. and if the versions of both the mother and Kumar are to believed, the abduction and the brutal rape of the victim took place within one hour.

"We have got the transit remand of Kumar. He is being brought to Delhi. We will have to interrogate him to ascertain the facts," Prabhakar said.

Kumar, who got married an year ago, came to Delhi with his father Bindeswar Sahi, who runs a juice shop in Old Seelampur, about 15 years ago. He had two brothers and four sisters who are staying in Bihar.

Kumar told police that he reached his native village on April 16 evening and then the next day, he went to his in-law's place.

Asked whether any other person was involved in the incident, he said they have to interrogate Kumar to know about the involvement of others.

On allegations that no woman constable accompanied the girl when she was taken to hospital, he said the MLC has recorded the presence of the two women constables at the time of incident.

On when Kumar had rented the accommodation, he said there were discrepancies in the statements given by the house owner and Kumar.

A case under section 188 CrPC has been registered against the house owner for not getting tenant verification.

The Delhi Police had slapped attempt to murder section against Kumar on Friday, who is also allegedly involved in a trespass case.

Prabhakar said that they have slapped sections 307 (attempt to murder), 376 (a) (rape), 362-A (kidnapping) among others of IPC and 6 and 9 of Protection of Children from Sexual Offences ( POSCO) Act, 2012 against Kumar. — PTI

WATERTOWN, Massachusetts: The surviving suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing was taken into police custody as investigators continued to look for answers after a tense, day-long manhunt that locked down Boston and captivated the nation.

A resident discovered suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, in a boat in his backyard after police had lifted a warning for residents to stay inside, officials said at a press conference. Tsarnaev’s brother, a fellow suspect in Monday’s deadly terrorist attack, was killed in a shootout with police earlier Friday.

“The hunt is over. The search is done. The terror is over. And justice has won. Suspect in custody,” Boston police announced on their Twitter feed late on Friday.

Cheers and hoots of relief broke out among residents in the Boston suburb of Watertown who had been penned in their homes all day long, staying out of harm’s way. Police cars blared their sirens in jubilation as they departed.

Watertown residents who had been told in the morning to stay inside behind locked doors poured out of their homes and lined the streets to cheer police vehicles as they rolled away from the scene.

Celebratory bells rang from a church tower. Teenagers waved American flags. Drivers honked. Every time an emergency vehicle went by, people cheered loudly.

Police said three other people were taken into custody for questioning at an off-campus housing complex at the University of the Massachusetts at Dartmouth where the younger man may have lived.

The resident had left his house after staying inside all day and “saw blood on a boat in the backyard,” said Boston police commissioner Ed Davis. “He opened the tarp and saw a man covered in blood.” The police responded to the scene, where they exchanged gunfire with the suspect, who had likely been wounded in the earlier showdown with police. He was later taken into custody.

Tsarnaev was in “serious condition” in hospital, Davis said.

Police had not read Tsarnaev his legal rights, which allow suspects to remain silent to avoid self—incrimination, under an exception to the law for national security purposes, US Attorney Carmen Ortiz said.

The boat had not been examined by police earlier in the day because it lay just outside the wide police perimeter they had spent hours searching, Davis said. “He managed to elude us by being just slightly outside the perimeter we set up,” Davis said. Another police official however said the suspect likely “didn’t go straight to the boat.”

Meanwhile, US President Barack Obama praised the work of law enforcement and pledged investigators would work to find answers to the attack.

“We’ve closed an important chapter in this tragedy,” Obama said from the White House, just over an hour after the police announcement. Those killed and wounded in Monday’s attack “deserve answers,” Obama said, stressing that the investigation continues. He urged Americans not to jump to conclusions about the motives of the suspects.

“When a tragedy like this happens, with public safety at risk and the stakes so high, it’s important that we do this right,” he said. “That’s why we take care not to rush to judgment not about the motivations of these individuals, certainly not about entire groups of people.”

US President Barack Obama was briefed throughout the day and had gathered with his national security team to follow the manhunt from the White House situation room, a senior aide said.

Tsarnaev had been considered armed and dangerous. He was identified as the man in the white baseball cap in surveillance video and photos from Monday’s bombings at the Boston Marathon finish line, where three people were killed and dozens were maimed with amputations. All told, 176 were wounded.

His brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, identified as the man in a black cap in the video images, died at a Boston hospital after a firefight early Friday in Watertown. Doctors said he suffered both gunshots and blast wounds.

Relatives of the men identified them as ethnic Chechens, who had lived in the United States for about 10 years. US media reported the younger brother was a naturalized US citizen.

“Turn yourself in!” Ruslan Tsarni told his nephew in comments broadcast on television. “Ask for forgiveness from the victim and the injured.” “He put shame on the Tsarni family, on the entire Chechen ethnicity,” Tsarni said outside his home in Montgomery Village, Maryland, outside Washington.

“I’m ready to kneel in front of [the families and the injured], seeking their forgiveness on behalf of my family,” he said.

“Tonight, our family applauds the entire law enforcement community for a job well done, and trust that our justice system will now do its job,” said the family of 8-year-old Martin Richard, who died in the bombing.

Also killed in the attack was a Chinese student.

The brothers had built an arsenal of pipe bombs, grenades and improvised explosive devices and used some of the weapons in trying to make their getaway, said Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger, a member of the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev had studied accounting as a part-time student at Bunker Hill Community College in Boston for three semesters from 2006 to 2008, the school said.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was registered as a student at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. Students said he was on campus this week after the Boston Marathon bombing. The campus closed down Friday along with colleges around the Boston area.

The men’s father, Anzor Tsarnaev, said in a telephone interview with AP from the Russian city of Makhachkala that his younger son, Dzhokhar, is “a true angel.” He said his son was studying medicine.

“He is such an intelligent boy,” the father said. “We expected him to come on holidays here.”

The city of Cambridge announced two years ago that it had awarded a $2,500 scholarship to him. He was then a senior at Cambridge Rindge & Latin School, a highly regarded public school whose alumni include Matt Damon and Ben Affleck.

Tsarni, the men’s uncle, said the brothers traveled here together from Russia. He called his nephews “losers” and said they had struggled to settle in the US and ended up “thereby just hating everyone.”

Russia praised

Shortly before Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s capture, the White House said Obama had spoken by phone with Russian President Vladimir Putin about the investigation.

The White House said in a statement that Obama “praised the close cooperation that the United States has received from Russia on counter-terrorism, including in the wake of the Boston attack.” — AP