A 38-year-old serial rapist, who sexually assaulted many minor girls has been arrested on Saturday by the Delhi Police.
During the interrogation, the accused Sunil Rastogi accepted his crime. Not only that, many shocking facts came out which twisted police mind.
Police said "during interrogation, the accused, revealed that he belongs to Rampur in Uttar Pradesh (UP) and regularly took a train to Delhi or Ghaziabad to target schoolgirls. The man has lost count of the girls he has raped so far."
The accused was arrested after a 10-year-old girl managed to flee when he tried to rape her. She ran away from the building where she was confined and contacted her parents. Then her parents immediately informed the police.
The police registered a FIR in New Ashok Nagar police station on January 10 to lodge a complaint.
Within few hours, another minor girl, aged nine, approached the police station with a similar complaint. Police did medical examinations and later recorded both parents' statements. Two separate cases were lodged under relevant sections of IPC.
When police counselled the 10-year-old victim, she said that she knew the streets where the accused walked with her. She also told the police that when she was returning home from school, the culprit came and gave her a cloth stating that her father was calling her.
Inspector CR Meena, SHO, New Ashok Nagar police station, and ACP (Kalyanpuri) Rahul Alwal to take up the investigation.
The girl was asked to show the building where she was taken. The police team along with counsellor accompanied the girl who showed routes. The police team examined a CCTV camera which was installed at a house near the crime scene. In the footage, the girl was seen walking with the accused.
The police came across another case which was lodged last year in December where another nine-year-old girl was raped in New Ashok Nagar by the same accused.
When the police interrogated with the locals of the area they found out that the accused name was Sunil Rastogi who is working as a tailor in East Delhi's New Ashok Nagar since 2004.
"Based on a tip-off then police arrested him on Saturday. Further investigation revealed that he is a resident of Rampur in Uttar Pradesh. He lives with a handicapped wife, two sons and three daughters. In Rampur, he works as a tailor at SS Tailor Shop" said Deputy Commissioner of Police (East District) Omvir Singh.
Singh said that "he admitted to targeting girls aged between seven and 10. Whenever he would find any minor girl going home from school, he used to mislead her on the pretext that her father had sent some clothes or some other articles to give her and take her to an isolated place, he added. In another shocking revelation, he confessed that to rape the minors he used to board a local morning train from Rampur to Ghaziabad."
"In the morning hours, he used to target girls studying in schools in Ghaziabad. In case, he could not find his target, he would travel up to New Ashok Nagar (the places he was familiar to) and fool a minor girl saying 'her father is calling her' by handing over some clothes to her," a source close to the investigation told Mail Today.
The source further added that "he used to take the girls to an isolated place, preferably to isolated buildings and rape them. Later, in the evening he used to return. For more than three years, he has been following this schedule."
Police also counselled Rastogi's own daughter as they suspected that the accused might have sexually assaulted his own daughters as well.
"On interrogation, Sunil Rastogi admitted he has committed the similar offences with many more girls in New Ashok Nagar, Ghaziabad and Rudrapur in Uttarakhand. It has also been revealed from the interrogation that many cases, including molestation, theft and cases under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act, were registered against the accused at various police stations in Rudrapur, Delhi and Ghaziabad," said Singh.
Woman teaches lesson to molester
BY M. DIVYA SRI
