A man who was wanted in a 22-year-old kidnapping and rape case was arrested from his village in Mainpuri district of Uttar Pradesh on Friday.
The accused, identified as Mukesh Kumar, 43, is said to have allegedly abducted a minor and illegally confined her for more than a month in October 2000. Though the minor was finally rescued from Firozabad, Mukesh was never arrested by the police.
After being rescued, the minor — who was 11 years old at the time of the incident — had told investigators about Mukesh and how he had sexually exploited her for more than a month at a slum colony in Firozabad. An FIR was registered following the statement of the victim’s father at PS Industrial Area on October 20, 2000. A local court had declared Mukesh Kumar a Proclaimed Offender (PO) in November, 2001.
A source said, “At the time of the alleged crime, Mukesh Kumar was unmarried and was a daily wager who lived in a slum colony in Industrial Area. Now that particular colony has been completely demolished and its occupants shifted to a rehabilitation colony. The then investigation agency had managed to get the exact residential address of the suspect from Firozabad where the minor was held hostage for more than a month. However, the police had failed to arrest him then, with the matter later being referred to the PO and Summon Staff, an exclusive police wing whose only task is to catch absconding fugitives who have been declared as Proclaimed Offenders.”
“After taking over the investigations, we started putting together the sequence of events. We had the suspect’s native address, but two raids there had yielded nothing previously. Mukesh later married and is the father of two kids. We only came to know about him after we cultivated an ‘informer’ at his village, who tipped us off about his presence in the area. Later, we came to know that Mukesh had told his wife and children to not disclose anything about him to any stranger. However, he had kept his involvment in the rape case a secret from his family. He was living in the village for the last three days when our informer informed us. A two member team, comprising ASI Ashok Kumar and constable Vakil Singh, raided the village and nabbed Mukesh after a brief chase. Mukesh tried to escape but constable Vakil Singh chased and nabbed him. SSP Kuldeep Singh Chahal had issued specific directions to us to ensure that men wanted in cases of rape, murder are brought to justice at any cost,” said Inspector Hari Om, in-charge of PO and Summon Staff. He added that Mukesh worked as a daily wager and sold jute bags in the grain markets on the side to make money.
An officer said that the case file of Mukesh Singh will be reopened in the district courts, Sector 43. The current investigation team is not aware about the whereabouts of the victim. Police personnel of Industrial Area police station will take fresh custody of Mukesh from the district courts. For now, Mukesh was produced before a court and sent to judicial custody in Model Burail jail on Saturday.
The officer added,, “The POCSO Act did not exist in 2000. Therefore, we cannot try him under that Act. He will be tried under law that was applicable in 2000.”
Many cases unsolved
Numbers showed that a huge number of cases — many of which are of henious nature like rape, murder — have been pending for more than one decade. Sources said many similarities have been found in old unsolved cases and some recently reported crimes, forcing the police to step up efforts to nab such criminals. Among the many cases that remain unsolved are the Neha Ahlawat murder case reported in 2010 and the murder of a woman, whose body was found naked at forest area of Maloya in January this year.
