60-year-old raped in Chandigarh: Co-accused lands in police net

Three days after a 48-year-old auto-rickshaw driver was held for gangraping a 60-year-old woman with his accomplice in broad daylight in Kaimbwala on July 3, police arrested his co-accused on Friday.

The accused, Agwesh, 25, a native of Uttar Pradesh (UP), was arrested from Sector 8, Chandigarh.

Earlier police on Tuesday had arrested the main accused, Arvind Kumar, 48, also a native of UP but currently residing in Kaimbwala.

“Both accused were produced before the duty magistrate on Saturday. The court sent them to judicial custody,” a police officer privy to the investigation said.

Sources said since there was nothing to recover from the co-accused and the facts of the case were already known to the police, his remand was not sought.

The duo is accused of leaving the victim to die in the middle of forest area in Kaimbwala after raping and assaulting her.

The victim, according to police, had hailed Arvind’s auto-rickshaw in Kaimbwala to reach Saketri temple. But the accused took her to a different religious place. When confronted by the victim, they took her to a nearby forest area and gangraped her.

The victim managed to reach home later in the evening, following which her family alerted the Police Control Room. She was rushed to GMSH, Sector 16, where the sexual assault was confirmed by doctors.

The victim’s statement that the auto-rickshaw driver did not have a toe led police to Arvind, who was arrested on July 4. Both the accused have been identified by the woman.

Notably, Arvind is now also a suspect in two sensational rape and murder cases that occurred 12 years apart and shook the city.

Forensic probe into the two cases had revealed that the 22-year-old MBA student, who was raped and murdered in Sector 38 West in 2010, a 40-year-old woman who met the same fate in Maloya in 2022, were murdered by the same man.

The Central Forensic Science Laboratory (CFSL) had come to the conclusion, intimated to Chandigarh Police, after DNA testing of semen taken from bodies of both victims.

UT police informed the concerned court about the plan to make Arvind, accused in the July 3 case, undergo DNA test to establish if he is the mystery killer who has eluded arrest for 13 years.

In the 2010 rape-murder case, police have already filed an untraced report in a local court, citing that all their efforts to arrest the accused went in vain.

Both the accused have been booked under Sections 376-D (gang rape), 323 (voluntarily causing hurt), 354 (assault or criminal force to woman with intent to outrage her modesty), 366 (kidnapping, abducting or inducing woman), 506 (criminal intimidation) and 34 (acts done by several persons in furtherance of common intention) of the Indian Penal Code at the Sector 3 police station.