F’bad rape: Cops to release sketches of suspects

Tribune News Service

Faridabad, January 16

The police have failed to nab the four accused who reportedly gang-raped a 23-year-old woman in a moving vehicle on Saturday night. They are now in the process of releasing sketches of the suspects. “As many as eight teams of the crime branch are on the job,” said Rajesh Kumar, ACP (Crime).

He said officials were collecting details of any Scorpio sold recently in Gurugram, Mewat, Palwal, Mathura and Noida as the vehicle used in the crime had a temporary registration number. One of the suspects could be a resident of Mewat as the victim had told the police that she had heard two of the accused calling out to a person named Mewati after her earrings were snatched before being dropped at a petrol pump near Seekri village in the district. “We are preparing the sketches of the suspects on the basis of information provided by the victim,’’ said a spokesperson of the Police Department.

Meanwhile, the police have registered two more cases of rape. While two persons, including an auto-rickshaw driver, have been arrested for raping a 15-year-old girl on Friday night, another person has been booked for raping a married woman on the pretext of providing her job, on Sunday.

The incident took place in the parking lot of a shopping mall located in Sector 37. Admitting that the crime graph had gone up in the district, sources in the department revealed that the number of rape cases had swollen to 194 in 2017 from 145 in 2016. The number of such cases was 102 in 2014 and 117 in 2015, respectively. Loot and theft cases have also gone up by 62 per cent and 40 per cent, respectively.

Faced with 37 per cent shortage in the department, the district police are awaiting installation of more than 30,000 CCTV cameras from the budget allocated for the Smart City project, it is learnt.