New Delhi
oi-Prakash KL
The Delhi Police have found key forensic evidence, with fingerprints of the victim and both accused confirming their presence in the bus, the IANS reported citing sources in the Delhi Police.
The samples of the fingers prints of the accused have also collected from the seats and steering wheel while the clothes worn by the accused have also been recovered and the dress containing blood and semen stains have been to the Forensic Science Laboratory.
Delhi Police arrested driver Kuldeep and conductor Sandeep for allegedly gang-raping a 16-year-old girl on August 4 in Greater Noida; forensic evidence confirms their presence on the Vishwanath Travels bus where the assault occurred, with the vehicle having pending traffic challans.
Both accused were arrested from Timarpur, around 5 km from Kashmere Gate. Police said a blanket was found draped over the steering wheel near the driver’s seat, while a bedsheet had been spread across the otherwise empty aisle between the rows of seats and this is where the alleged assault took place.
However, the DNA report is still awaited.
The incident occurred on August 4 when the 16-year-old girl was on her way to her to meet her cousin in Noida’s Sector 63 after being disagreements with her mother. She mistakenly got down Pari Chowk in Greater Noida on the rainy night from Mainpuri.
She allegedly signalled to the empty sleeper bus, and the driver, Kuldeep, along with the conductor, Sandeep, offered her a ride to. After 5-7 minute interaction, Kuldeep convinced her to get on to the bus saying that the bus was heading to Sector 63.
Bakhtwarpur Village (Noida Sec 127-128)
Once she boarded the bus, the two accused allegedly gang-raped and threatened her before abandoning her near Kashmere Gate, according to police.
Police arrested Kuldeep and Sandeep in Timarpur. The bus, operated by Vishwanath Travels, was seized for forensic examination.
Both accused are residents of Kanpur and had been working with the travel company for the past two years.
According to a report in The Print, the girl boarded the bus around 9 pm and was abandoned near Kashmere Gate around midnight. An autorickshaw driver came to her rescue and took her to the police station. “The auto-rickshaw driver approached the girl after noticing that she appeared distraught. She was crying and seemed completely lost, unable to say where she was,” the website quoted an officer familiar with the case as saying.
The driver then took her to the Kashmere Gate Police Station, where she provided her father’s contact number and narrated what had happened to her.
“She told us that she boarded the bus around 9 pm and was thrown out by the driver-conductor duo near Ring Road only around midnight,” the officer said.
According to the report, the girl spent almost three hours inside the bus. “The journey from Pari Chowk to Kashmere Gate normally takes less than an hour. But the accused kept driving around for nearly three hours before taking the Expressway and leaving her near Kashmere Gate,” another officer was quoted as saying.
The bus was not operating on its regular passenger service that night. According to the travel company that operated it, the vehicle had been taken to a workshop in Surajpur, Greater Noida, for repairs after developing a technical fault. It was later being driven towards Kashmere Gate for painting work.
After the assault, the bus travelled about 26 km before the two accused dropped the girl at the Kashmere Gate bus stand.
CCTV cameras on bus were non-functional
Police said the CCTV cameras installed on the bus were not functional at the time of the incident. They also said thick curtains had been fitted over the windows, blocking visibility from outside.
Investigators have collected CCTV recordings from several points along the bus’s route, starting from the location in Surajpur where the vehicle had been taken for repairs and extending to the place where the girl was dropped.
Police said statements recorded from workshop employees established that both the driver and conductor were at the workshop and later took the bus out after the repair work was completed.
Bus had ₹63,000 in pending challans
The bus had 12 unpaid traffic challans carrying a combined penalty of ₹63,000 when the incident occurred, according to The Hindu.
The violations included operating without a permit or contrary to permit conditions, as well as repeated breaches of speed limits.
The bus continued to operate despite the pending fines. One of the challans, worth ₹26,000, was issued under Sections 192A and 66 of the Motor Vehicles Act for operating without a permit or violating permit conditions related to the vehicle’s route, area or purpose. It also cited Section 190(2) for violations involving mandatory reflective tape and speed-limit devices on commercial vehicles.
The bus, registered in Uttar Pradesh, was registered in Firozabad in April and holds an all-India permit, according to Noida Assistant Regional Transport Officer Udit Narayan Pandey. The vehicle was being operated by a travel company based in Noida.
