Eyewitnesses Recall Helping Delhi Rape Victim

Eyewitnesses Recall Helping Delhi Rape Victim

By Preetika Rana and Tripti Lahiri

Raj Kumar, a security patrolman for a private highway management firm, and a colleague were on a motorcycle on the Delhi airport expressway on Sunday, Dec. 16, when they saw the man. He was waving his arms and shouting frantically.

Near him, a woman lay unconscious in the dusty grass on the side of the expressway, according to a person familiar with the patrolmen's account. The young man and woman were naked.

According to a police document reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Kumar was the first person to stop to help the pair, whose ordeal that night would be widely reported in the following days, leading to street protests in New Delhi over the lack of safety for women in India's capital.

The name of Mr. Kumar's colleague wasn't cited in the police document. The patrolmen could not be reached for comment.

The woman, 23 years old, had been raped and assaulted with an iron rod by a group of men on a bus that night before being thrown off, police say. She died Dec. 29 of the injuries sustained in the assault. Her male friend was severely beaten, according to police.

The pair had been heading home after a movie when they boarded a private bus at 9:15 p.m., according to police. Soon after boarding, they were attacked by a group of men on the bus, one of whom was driving while the others posed as passengers, according to police. The pair and the group of men were the only ones on the bus, the police say.

Five men have been charged with rape, murder, kidnapping and other offenses. Lawyers for the men say their clients are innocent. A sixth accused, a teenager, is expected to face proceedings in juvenile court.

According to the police document, the bus was captured on a hotel security camera at 9:53 p.m. near the spot where the couple was dumped shortly after. The police document said Mr. Kumar spotted the couple soon after "by the side of the Mahipalpur flyover" - a well-known portion of the expressway near a strip of hotels. The person familiar with the matter said the patrolmen found the pair at "around 10 p.m."

Mr. Kumar and his colleague braked and called the control room of their firm, identified in police records as EGIS Infra Management India. The company manages the expressway from Delhi to Indira Gandhi International Airport in a joint venture with DSC Ltd., a construction firm. Both companies declined comment.

When they saw the pair, Mr. Kumar and his colleague asked their control room to call the police, said the person familiar with the matter.  The control room called the police, the person familiar with the matter said, adding that under the patrolmen's mandate, they are supposed to alert police if they find citizens in distress.

As the young man and woman waited at the roadside for the police to arrive, one of the patrolmen gave the woman his sweater. Later one of them offered the man his shirt.

At about 10:15 p.m. the front-desk manager from a hotel located along the expressway drove by. He didn't immediately stop. But then he turned back, thinking of the blood streaming from the man's head. "I thought to myself 'I should stop,'" said the manager, 28 years old.

The young man at the roadside was still attempting to hail vehicles from the side of the road, the hotel manager recalled. "Not just to me, to everyone," he said. But while other cars and motorcycles slowed, they did not stop. The woman was slim, but her face, turned away, wasn't visible, he said.

The young man was relating what had happened to him to the patrolmen, said the hotel manager. "He spoke of a bus," he said. "He was saying that they were coming from seeing a movie and they got a lift and were beaten," the manager said.

One of the patrolmen asked the young man whether "something wrong" was done to the woman, according to the manager. The male victim responded, "It could be." The young man has said he was beaten so badly he was unconscious for portions of the attack on the bus.

Minutes ticked by. No police van arrived, according to the person familiar with the patrolmen's account. Mr. Kumar and his colleague again urged the control room to call the police, according to this person. The call was made, the person said.

The police document says that, at 10:21 p.m., the control room described the pair's location as: "After getting down the Mahipalpur flyover, on way from Gurgaon toward Delhi, in front of the GMR gate, getting inside the service lane, a boy and a girl are sitting without clothes. A lot of people are gathered here."

While waiting for the police, the hotel manager said he offered to fetch a sheet from his hotel and a bottle of water. One of the patrolmen drove to get the items as the hotel manager and the other patrolman waited, the hotel manager said. When the sheet arrived, the hotel manager tore it in two, covering each of the victims with a piece.

Police spokesman Rajan Bhagat has said that the first police van arrived at 10:27 p.m., while a second one arrived two minutes later.

The male victim told an Indian news channel that the police vans argued about which police station had jurisdiction over the crime, losing precious minutes. He also told the channel that police would not carry his gravely injured friend, who was unable to walk, into the van because she was bleeding heavily. In spite of his injuries, he picked her up and placed her in the police vehicle, he said in the television interview.

Mr. Bhagat said the second van left the spot at 10:39 p.m., 10 minutes after it arrived, to take the pair to Safdarjung Hospital, approximately 13 kilometers away.

In all, approximately 45 minutes had passed between when the couple was tossed out of the bus, and when the police van ferried them to hospital. A police statement said the van reached the hospital at 10:55 p.m. Mr. Bhagat declined comment on the claim that police had not helped carry the woman into the van.

The hotel manager said he left after the first police van arrived and was not there when the woman was carried into the police van. Once home, the manager narrated what he had seen to his wife.

"I really thought it was an accident along the highway," he said.

It wasn't until he watched the news the next day that he realized what had happened to them, he said.

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The Wall Street Journal