After 21 months, man held for rape at Kherki in Manesar
Manesar deputy commissioner of police, Deepak Kumar Jewaria, said that Kumar had fled from the village after the incident was discovered on the same day
After remaining on the run for more than 21 months, a 25-year-old man with criminal antecedents was arrested for allegedly raping a mentally challenged woman at Kherki in Manesar, police said.
Investigators said that suspect Rakesh Kumar alias Thakur was finally arrested by a team led by assistant sub-inspector Nisha Sangwan from his village Kherki on Sunday, hours after he visited the village.
The incident had taken place when the 32-year-old woman was on an empty plot behind her house on June 7, 2022 and her husband, a cancer patient, was at work.
Manesar deputy commissioner of police, Deepak Kumar Jewaria, said that Kumar had fled from the village after the incident was discovered on the same day.
“He stopped using mobile phones or social media platforms to evade arrest. He used to visit Kherki once in 7-8 months. Villagers used to alert him whenever police reached the village to arrest him after receiving a tip-off,” he said.
Jewaria said that Kumar kept hiding in remote and rural areas of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh. “He kept changing his location every few weeks,” he said adding a medical examination had established that the survivor had been raped.
Investigators said that Sangwan and her team had reached Kherki in plain clothes on Sunday to nab him as villagers had tipped him off about the presence of cops in uniform several times in the past.
“Police neither had his photograph or other details. The suspect’s parents had died several years back and there was only a grandmother at home, leaving whom he had fled,” an investigator said.
The officer said there was a woman who was an eyewitness to the incident and had raised an alarm after which matter had come to light. “Police had recorded her statement but she later turned hostile. The couple, hailing from Tikamgarh, MP, was given medical help and the woman’s condition had started to improve. However, 3-4 months after the incident, they left the village probably after being threatened by villagers linked to Kumar,” he said.
According to the police, Kumar had earlier been in jail for six months in an armed robbery case registered at Bilaspur police station. Investigators said they were now trying to trace the couple.