Indian police said Wednesday they have arrested one of three men accused of gang-raping a woman and tossing her baby from a moving autorickshaw, killing the infant. Police released sketches of the three men — including the autorickshaw driver — late Tuesday after registering a case of murder and gang-rape following the alleged attack last month in Gurgaon, on the outskirts of New Delhi.
“We have made one arrest, yes. As far as the two others are concerned, a team is after them and we will arrest them very soon,” Gurgaon’s commissioner of police Sandeep Khirwar told AFP.
In her complaint to police, the woman said she got into the autorickshaw with her nine-month-old daughter around midnight on May 29 to go to her parents’ home in Gurgaon in northern Haryana state.
There were two men already in the rickshaw who started to harass her as soon as she got in and the three sexually assaulted her for several hours before dumping her by a roadside, according to her complaint.
After being released from her ordeal the woman went back to look for her baby, who had died of head injuries, and took her to hospital on the subway, Khirwar said. India has a gruesome record on rape, with the capital New Delhi alone registering 2,199 rape cases in 2015 — an average of six a day, according to most recent official figures. Nearly 40,000 rape cases are reported every year but the real number is thought to be much higher, with victims wary of how their complaints will be dealt with or the social stigma attached to sex crimes. India strengthened its laws on sexual violence after the fatal gang rape of a Delhi student in 2012 caused global outrage, but attacks on women are still widespread.