NEW DELHI, 20 November 2003 — Police in New Delhi have deployed decoy teams to scour the palace of Indian President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam and collar men who stalk or assault lonely women in the sprawling complex, a newspaper report said yesterday.
The week-long drive has so far not yielded positive results but male and female detectives are looking for sex offenders, the Indian Express newspaper quoted Kalam’s Rashtrapati Bhavan police chief K.K. Maheshwari as saying.
Last month four soldiers from India’s elite presidential guards were arrested on charges of abducting and gang-raping a 17-year-old college student in a joggers’ park behind the British-built palace.
Maheshwari declined to offer details but the Express said policewomen were acting as bait to lure potential offenders in the 400-acre complex while their armed male colleagues lurked with handcuffs ready.
Meanwhile, Delhi Police yesterday enhanced the reward eight-fold to Rs. 400,000 for information on two men accused in the recent rape of a Swiss diplomat.
The reward will come into effect immediately and hold good for one year, Joint Commissioner of Police (Southern Range) Satish Chandra said in a statement. The reward will be paid to anybody providing “information or a clue or render any help leading to the arrest of accused persons involved in the rape,” he said, assuring that the identity of the informer would be kept secret.
“The Commissioner of Police, Delhi, reserves the right to decide finally by whom the reward has been earned and in what proportion it will be distributed among various claimants, in case more than one claimant comes forward for the same,” Chandra said.
The 35-year-old diplomat was abducted in her own car by two persons from the parking lot of Sirifort auditorium when she was leaving at around 10 pm after watching a movie at the India International Film Festival. One of the accused then raped her as another drove the vehicle through South Delhi streets.
Police has been desperately but unsuccessfully trying to nab the culprits in the Oct. 14 incident which has caused much embarrassment to the country, besides the police establishment.
