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The Statesman

Publication Date : 02-01-2013

The six accused in the gangrape of a paramedical student on December 16 in a moving bus had allegedly tried to run the bus over the girl after dumping her in Vasant Vihar but her male friend saved her from being crushed, according to the  charge-sheet readied by Delhi police.

 Police are all set to submit the charge-sheet before the trial court on Thursday, January 3. It will reveal more horrific details of the brutal crime that has outraged the nation.

The victim was gangraped in the bus, brutally assaulted and then thrown out of the vehicle along with her male friend, a software engineer, who was also thrashed.

The girl and her friend were returning from a Saket mall after watching the film Life of Pi and had boarded the chartered bus at Munirka for Dwarka not knowing it was plying illegally. The juvenile, among the accused, had called for passengers and told them it was going to their destination.

Sources said when the girl and her friend entered the bus, they found six people who were not passengers and were obviously known to each other. The accused allegedly made some lewd comments about the girl which were objected to by the male friend.

“They asked him where he was taking her and this resulted in the argument. They first assaulted the boy with iron rods and when the girl tried to protect her friend, they beat her up also. When she resisted, they got enraged and sexually assaulted her,” the sources said.

The accused then allegedly tried to drive the bus over the girl but she was pulled aside in the nick of time by her male friend. As she was pinned down and raped, the young woman put up a fight but was hopelessly outnumbered. She bit three of the men assaulting her. The bite marks on the three accused men are likely to be part of police’s evidence in their charge-sheet, the sources said.

Police have booked the five accused under Sections 302 (murder) 307 (attempt to murder) 376(2) (g) (gangrape), 377 (unnatural offences), 365 (kidnapping), 396 (dacoity) and 201 (destruction of evidence) read with 34 (common intention) of the IPC.

Police would send a separate report to the Juvenile Justice Board for the trial of the 17-year-old allegedly involved in the case.

“We have included the profile of the prime accused, Ram Singh, a resident of a slum cluster in sector 3 RK Puram. His wife passed away four years ago. He is short-tempered and an alcoholic who used to pick fights regularly. Since January 2012, he drove a private bus to commute students of a public school in South Delhi,” said the police.

Police said the co-accused, Akshay, worked as a helper with the bus.

Ram Singh met with an accident and the matter is sub judice. On December 16, they had alcohol and ate some chicken after which Ram parked the bus in RK Puram. They then picked up Ram Adhar and robbed him of his gold chain.

The sources said the prosecution during the trial would demand death penalty for the five accused. The Singapore doctor, who carried out the postmortem of the victim, will be included as a witness in the Delhi Police charge-sheet, the sources said.

The male friend of the victim will be the main witness while the Singapore doctor, who carried out the postmortem and the Indian mission official who received her death certificate, would be asked to testify, they said.

The sources said under Indian law, it was mandatory for a doctor carrying out a postmortem in a medico-legal case to be made a witness.

They said none of the accused has been made approver as the police has managed to prepare a “tightly knit” case against them. The fast-track court for the case is likely to be notified by the government today, the sources said.

The government has also constituted a 13-member special task force headed by the Union home secretary that would look into the safety of women in Delhi and review the functioning of Delhi Police.

The task force would review on a fortnightly basis action taken by the police and the Delhi government regarding safety issues of women, a home ministry announcement said. This is the third major step taken by the Union government to ensure safety and security of women following the public outrage over the gangrape.

With reports from PTI