Teacher raped in Delhi as police bicker over jurisdiction

Delhi’s status as the crime capital of the nation was reaffirmed when a 20-year-old computer teacher was allegedly raped by five men in the city on Tuesday evening. Her male colleague, who came to the rescue, was beaten up.

The incident took place near a private computer institute in Sultanpuri (West Delhi) at around 8.30 pm. The victim had stepped out of the institute with colleague Satya Prakash when three men started teasing her.

When Prakash objected, he was brutally beaten up and she was forcibly carried away in a car to a railway track nearby. There, the teasers were joined by another two men and they took turns to rape her.

Although Prakash was quick to alert the police, tracing the victim took time because of a dispute over jurisdiction between officers of Nangloi and Sultanpuri police stations.
When finally the girl was found, it was too late. She was lying near the tracks in a bruised condition.

“The girl stays in the same locality (Sultanpuri),” a senior police officer said, adding, “Medical examination has confirmed rape.” The victim and her colleague are undergoing treatment at Sanjay Gandhi Hospital, he said.

Delhi witnesses hundreds of rapes every year. Although the number has come down over the years, the capital continues to be a danger zone for women because of lack of concerted effort to control crime. In 2007, the city saw 598 rapes, a slight improvement from 2006 (623 cases) and 2005 (658 cases).