Chandigarh, March 14: Mohammad Irfan, the auto driver who is in judicial custody for raping a Dehradun girl along with his accomplices in Sector 53 last November, was also involved in the gangrape of a call centre employee in Sector 29 in December 2016, the UT police told court on Tuesday.
The forensic report had found Irfan’s DNA sample to be a “contributor” in the call centre employee’s rape. Citing this as the evidence, police had sought his production warrant for interrogation. After the victim, who is a resident of Halomajra, identified him, Irfan allegedly confessed to the cops that he along with an aide had raped the 21-year-old in a forested area along Dakshin Marg in Sector 29 on December 12, 2016.
High drama was witnessed when Irfan was produced on production warrant before a local court on Tuesday morning.
The victim and her mother were also present in court. The girl lost her calm when she saw Irfan before he was being taken to the courtroom. Accompanied by her mother, she tried to slap him. However, cops intervened and took him from there.
Later, police sought Irfan’s five-day remand in order to take him to Faizabad in Uttar Pradesh and Delhi in order to arrest the other accused. The auto used in the crime was also to be recovered, said police. They also dropped hints regarding his involvement in other gangrape cases. However, The court of judicial magistrate first class (JMIC) Palwinder Singh sent him to three days police remand.
Police while seeking Irfan’s production warrant had specified that DNA profiles generated from Mohd Irfan, Mohd Garib and Kismat Ali, all accused in the Dehradun girl’s gangrape, were obtained from the Central Forensic Science Laboratory director to compare them with DNA profiling in the Halomajra girl’s gangrape case and sent to the Mohali forensic laboratory.
Police had filed chargesheet against the three in the 2017 case on February 20, just a day before completion of 90 days since the registration of FIR. The three were booked under Sections 376(D) (gangrape) and 506 (criminal intimidation) of the Indian Penal Code on November 18, 2017.
The similarity in modus operandi in the two cases made the police probe their role in the previous gangrape. This becomes all the more crucial as the DNA sample of Wasim Malik, who was arrested in the Sector-29 case and is undergoing trial, didn’t match with semen sample collected from the victim.
Wasim was arrested on the basis of a tip-off. Although the victim initially identified him during the identification parade, his sketch was not made part of the chargesheet submitted in court.
Later, even the victim said that she wasn’t sure if he was the accused, following which she was declared hostile by the public prosecutor during trial in the court of additional district and sessions judge Poonam R Joshi.
The case is being heard before a special court and will be taken up on March 15.
Source Tribune India
