New Delhi, Sept. 1 -- Delhi Police are mapping the route of the sleeper bus in which a 16-year-old girl was allegedly gang-raped earlier this month, using CCTV footage and the mobile phone location of one of the accused, with investigators also finding that the vehicle was issued eight challans in Uttar Pradesh in July, mostly for speeding, officials said.
One of the challans, issued in Hamirpur on July 23, was for Rs 23,000 for allegedly operating the bus without a permit, while five of the eight challans were issued in Mathura. The total value of the challans was Rs 54,000, police said.
The bus was purchased in April and registered in Firozabad on April 28, according to the investigation.
Police are using CCTV footage collected from several locations, including Kashmere Gate, Timarpur parking and Pari Chowk in Greater Noida, to reconstruct the movement of the bus on the night of August 4.
One of the cameras captured the bus getting onto the Hanuman Mandir flyover, which investigators believe will help establish its route.
The footage is being analysed alongside the location data of the accused's mobile phone to map the bus's movements and identify the places where it may have stopped during the journey, a senior police officer said.
The victim's clothes, which allegedly bear blood and semen stains, have been sent to the Forensic Science Laboratory and will be matched with the DNA samples of the two accused, bus driver Kuldeep (39) and conductor Sandeep (26), both residents of Kanpur.
It has been found that no verification of the accused was done by the bus company, according to police sources.
The victim's clothes, the seat cover and CCTV footage are expected to form important pieces of evidence in the case, police said.
The 16-year-old girl, who had left her home in Mainpuri after being scolded by her mother, boarded the bus at Pari Chowk in Greater Noida on a rainy night, believing the conductor's assurance that it would take her to Noida Sector 63, where her cousin lived.
The bus, however, was not on regular passenger service that night. It had been taken to a workshop in Surajpur, Greater Noida, for repairs after developing a technical fault and was subsequently being taken towards Kashmere Gate for painting, according to the travel company that operated it.
Police allege that the two accused picked up the girl around 9 pm and proceeded towards Kashmere Gate. During the journey, they allegedly raped her inside the moving bus and threatened to kill her when she resisted.
The girl was abandoned near Kashmere Gate and later reached the police station in an auto-rickshaw, where she reported the incident. Delhi Police registered an FIR and got her medically examined, which confirmed rape, officials said.
With the help of CCTV footage, police traced the bus within a few hours and arrested Kuldeep and Sandeep from a parking lot in Timarpur. The bus was seized and the accused underwent potency tests, police said.
Forensic teams found the girl's hair inside the bus as police examined CCTV and technical evidence. The DCW sought an action-taken report.
Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from Millennium Post.