Teenage girl gang-raped on bus in Dehradun; five nabbed

Dehradun, August 18

The police here today arrested five persons in connection with the alleged gang-rape of a teenage girl in a bus owned by the Uttarakhand Government after it arrived at the Dehradun bus stand from Delhi, officials said.

Dehradun SSP Ajay Singh said those arrested included the driver and the conductor of the bus. He said the incident occurred on August 12 and the police were informed about it last evening.

The police identified the Uttarakhand Roadways bus by scanning CCTV cameras and arrested the five accused, he said. The accused have been identified as Dharmendra Kumar (32) and Rajpal (57) of Buggawala in Uttarakhand’s Haridwar, Devendra (52) of Bhagwanpur in Haridwar; Rajesh Kumar Sonkar (38) of Patel Nagar in Dehradun and Ravi Kumar (34) of Nawabganj in Farrukhabad in Uttar Pradesh.

He said Dhamendra was the bus driver and Devendra its conductor. Ravi and Rajpal were drivers of other buses and Sonkar a cashier of Uttarakhand Roadways posted at the bus stand. The police officer said the bus had been impounded and a forensic team was collecting evidence.

The police said the incident came to light after the Dehradun Child Welfare Committee (CWC) was informed about a girl, aged 16 to 17 years, sitting alone on a bench at the Interstate Bus Terminal on August 12. The CWC sent her to Bal Niketan, a shelter home for girls. During counselling, she told the authorities about the alleged rape, after which a police complaint was filed under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and the POCSO Act.

The police said during interrogation, the girl told them she was an orphan and a resident of Punjab. Later, she told them she was from Moradabad in UP. She first went to Delhi from Moradabad and then took a bus from Kashmiri Gate in Delhi to Dehradun where she was allegedly raped. The police said the girl kept changing her statements initially, but on interrogation she gave information about her family.

The police contacted the family and found that the victim’s parents are alive. They were also told the girl had fled her house in past also without informing anyone. However, each time the family brought her home after getting information about her through various sources. According to the SSP, Devendra told the police during interrogation that he saw the girl at Kashmiri Gate ISBT in Delhi, seeking information about how to reach Punjab.

The conductor suggested she board his bus to Dehradun and then take another to Punjab via Paonta Sahib, the police said. But after the bus reached Dehradun and all the passengers got off, Devendra and Dhamendra allegedly raped her, the police said, based on what Devendra told them. He said when the other three accused came to know about the girl, they also went inside the bus and allegedly raped her. — PTI