Rape accused emerges as murderer of little girls

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, July 1

An accused nabbed by the city police in a rape case has emerged to be a serial killer previously also convicted in cases of rapes and killings of various little girls who were abducted, raped and then murdered by him.

At least three previous cases of rape and murder have been found to be filed against the accused Rajinder Kumar, alias Kala, alias Lali, who was arrested from Basti Bawa Khel and was in police remand for two days.

A case under Sections 363/366-A was registered at the Basti Bawa Khel police station, Jalandhar, on June 28, 2017. The accused confessed that he had brought a girl there to rape her. On being enquired further, he said that during the celebration of the Mata Saraswati Utsav in Jalandhar, he took a girl, aged eight, to a plot near Dhadde village on the Hoshiarpur road on the pretext of buying her some “prasad”.

He said he raped the girl there after which he strangled her with a piece of cloth. A case regarding this had already been registered at the Basti Bawa Khel police station on February 2 this year under Sections 365/302/376 of the IPC and Sections 6/8 of the PSCO Act.

While the accused had previous criminal cases pending against him, he had been sentenced to three and a half years in jail for the rape of two girls, aged eight-and-a-half and six, as per an FIR registered in 2002, wherein he had kidnapped and raped the girls while they were returning to their home from school. He was also sentenced to 10 years in jail for the rape of another girl in 2007, when a witness saw him raping a girl after he heard the cries of a girl. In 1997 as well, the accused had been sentenced to one year imprisonment. The accused is being further investigated to ascertain his involvement in other cases.