New Delhi, Aug. 31 -- A 43-km journey by a private sleeper bus through Greater Noida and Delhi, during which a 16-year-old girl was allegedly gang-raped, has exposed glaring gaps in roadside surveillance and policing, with investigators finding just two proper checkpoints along the route, officials said.
The girl, who had boarded the bus at Pari Chowk in Greater Noida on the night of August 4 believing she would be dropped at Noida Sector 63, was allegedly raped by the driver and conductor while the vehicle was moving. She was later abandoned near Kashmere Gate in north Delhi.
The two accused -- bus driver Kuldeep, 39 and conductor Sandeep, 26, both residents of Kanpur -- were arrested from a parking lot in Timarpur within hours after Delhi Police registered an FIR at the Kashmere Gate police station.
A senior police officer privy to the investigation said the entire route, from Pari Chowk to Kashmere Gate, is being mapped to ascertain the availability of police checkpoints, barricades, CCTV cameras and other surveillance mechanisms along the 43-km stretch.
"We got to know that the first checkpoint was a few metres away from Pari Chowk. There was a police booth and heavy barricading installed along the roadside," the officer said, requesting anonymity.
Investigators are tracking the bus's journey through major checkpoints and intersections to determine whether it was captured by CCTV cameras, whether vehicle monitoring systems were operational and whether police personnel were deployed at critical points.
One such point was the Delhi-Noida intersection near Mayur Vihar, one of the busiest stretches along the route. Heavy barricading was installed along the roadside, but there were no police personnel present at the spot during the night, the officer said.
CCTV cameras were also missing from the traffic signals at the intersection, creating another surveillance gap on a route that the bus allegedly travelled without being stopped, he said.
Police are examining footage from cameras installed at other points to reconstruct the bus's movement and identify any locations where it may have stopped before reaching Kashmere Gate.
The route assessment found further gaps near the destination. At Kashmere Gate, there was no barricading or checkpoint at the location where the journey ended, according to the investigation.
"In the 43-km stretch that we covered, we could trace only two proper checkpoints before reaching the final destination, Kashmere Gate," the officer said.
The findings are significant as the bus was not operating a regular passenger service that night. According to the travel company and investigators, it had been taken to a workshop at Surajpur in Greater Noida for repairs after developing a technical fault and was later being driven towards Kashmere Gate for painting.
The accused took delivery of the bus from the workshop around 5 pm and started their journey around 9 pm. They allegedly picked up the girl near Pari Chowk when it was raining and dark after telling her that they were headed towards Sector 63 and could drop her there.
The girl alleges sexual assault by bus conductor and driver.
Police arrest duo after tracing vehicle from Noida to Kashmere Gate.
Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from Millennium Post.