Man accused of raping six-year-old girl nabbed in Rajkot

RAJKOT: The migrant labourer who had allegedly raped a six-year-old homeless girl after abducting her from the footpath where she was asleep with her parents on early Monday morning in Jetpur of Rajkot district was nabbed on Tuesday.

Police said the accused, identified as Sonu Chauhan (22), had allegedly picked up the girl and had taken her to a dark corner on the footpath where he had committed the crime.

When the girl started screaming, three passers-by rushed to the spot, following which Chauhan relinquished the survivor and vanished into the cover of darkness.

“However before the accused could flee from the spot, his image had been captured in the CCTV camera installed at the place. While trying to ascertain the identity of the accused, the officials of Rajkot rural local crime branch received a tip-off that the culprit was one Sonu Chauhan,” Balram Meena, Rajkot rural superintendent of police, told a press conference in Rajkot on Tuesday.

“It was found during the investigation that Chauhan lived in a rented room beside Shrinath Process in Gadhani Rang of Navagadh locality in Jetpur. Acting on this information, we raided his house and nabbed him,” added Meena.

Police said that Chauhan had been in Jetpur for the past 10 years hopping jobs as a labourer. He led the life of a vagabond and had not visited his native in Basai village of Nichlaul taluka in Maharajganj district of Uttar Pradesh.

There are more than five lakh migrant labourers in Rajkot district, of them only 50,000 have been sent to Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Odisha, so far since the beginning of the lockdown period to fight the spread of Covid-19, according to the district administration of Rajkot.

(The victim's identity has not been revealed to protect her privacy as per Supreme Court directives on cases related to sexual assault)