3 months after acquittal in Chhawla case, man arrested for murder

Delhi Police has arrested a man for allegedly killing an autorickshaw driver, nearly three months after the Supreme Court acquitted him in a 2012 gang rape and murder case.

The police arrested two men — Vinod and Pawan — on Monday for stabbing to death a 44-year-old autorickshaw driver Anar Singh, a resident of Munirka, on January 26, in a robbery bid. Vinod was among the three men accused of gang-raping and murdering a 19-year-old woman in Dwarka’s Chhawla in 2012, a senior police officer said.

The police have registered a case under Section 302 (murder) of IPC and the two murder accused have been sent to three-day police custody by a court. The police received information about the murder at 1.56 a.m. on January 26.

“When a police team reached the spot opposite Deen Dayal Upadhyay College, it found that a passerby had taken the victim to Tarak Hospital, Dwarka Mor. There were deep cuts on the victim’s neck. The hospital had declared him brought dead,” said the senior officer.

“It is a case of attempted robbery. As soon as the accused threatened the autorickshaw driver with a knife, he resisted, following which they stabbed him,” the officer added.

On February 9, 2012, after the victim left her office in Gurugram’s Cyber Hub, she was allegedly abducted by the three accused from near her residence in Delhi’s Qutub Vihar.

Three days later, the Haryana police found her mutilated body in a field in Rewari. The accused were soon arrested and charged under sections of the IPC related to gang rape, murder, kidnapping and unnatural sex.

On November 7, the apex court acquitted Rahul, Ravi Kumar and Vinod due to “lack of clinching evidence and glaring lapses in the trial”. The three men had filed a petition in the SC in 2015 challenging their conviction. They had been convicted and sentenced to death by a sessions court in 2014. The same year, the HC had upheld the verdict of the lower court.

On November 21, Lieutenant-Governor V.K. Saxena approved the filing of a review petition in the SC, challenging its decision to acquit the three men. However, according to the victim’s father, the petition is yet to be accepted by the top court.