Gurgaon: Nine days after a woman was gang-raped and her nine-month-old baby flung to the ground and killed to smother her cries, the police Wednesday arrested one of the three men allegedly responsible for the double crime.
While Yogendra was nabbed from his hideout in Gurgaon, his two accomplices, Amit and Jaikesh, are still on the run, said Gurgaon police commissioner Sandeep Khirwar. All three had come to Gurgaon from Bulandshahr in western Uttar Pradesh recently.
The police Wednesday pieced together the narrative behind the May 29 gang rape and murder in the industrial area of Manesar and admitted to lapses in the investigation.
Four-hour horror
The 23-year-old woman recounted her four-hour horror at Manesar, a short distance away from the bustling "millennium town" of Gurgaon.
"My child died but I never got to know," she told reporters outside the police station in a chilling matter-of-fact tone.
She was on her way to her parental house at Khandsa village when she was first given a lift in a truck. The truck driver also molested her but dropped her off on the busy NH 8 as she put up strong resistance. That's when the three evidently drunk men spotted her and offered to drop her home.
"When I was waiting, the three men were drinking beer and approached me in a tempo, asking where I was going alone. They started attacking me... When my child started crying, they tried to smother my baby. And then they threw her on the footpath. I requested them to stop, saying my child is crying. After that they raped me on the road," she said.
The men left the woman after raping her for four hours. Not realizing that her baby had died, she went back to the spot where they had flung the baby, picked her up and went to a hospital where doctors declared her dead.
Unwilling to give up, the young mother picked up her baby, got on to a Delhi Metro with the lifeless body to take her to a hospital in Delhi and later returned to the MG Road Metro Station, on Gurgaon's glittering Mall Mile, where her husband was waiting.
"I did not believe my daughter had died and I traveled with the dead child to a hospital in South Delhi's Hauzrani area and later returned to M G Road metro station," she said.
Her story once again underscores the vulnerability of women in the National Capital Region and the lack of effective police action, the young woman said there was no police patrol in sight through that endless night.
"There may have been some laxity or lapse in adding the charges of rape to the case. We are taking action against the officers. One lady sub inspector has been suspended. It was also found that there was delay in medical and other processes... during investigation," Khirwar admitted.
The police also reportedly did not register an FIR of gang rape initially but later included the charge five days after the incident.
A Special Investigation Team (SIT) was formed and was on the trail of Yogendra's accomplices in the Magic Tempo, a four-wheeled mini auto. Prima facie, all three accused were involved in the murder of the baby. The postmortem says the death of the baby was caused by smothering and external injury, he said.
Referring to the woman taking the baby to a hospital, he said, "The hospital administration declared the infant dead but didn't inform the police. We will take legal action against it."
The accused and the woman stay on a rented accommodation in Bas Khusla village at Manesar. She had left home after an altercation with her husband and neighbors on the night of May 29.