<p>She quietly sits in a corner clasping a passport size photograp of her daughter. Occasionally, using a green dupatta draped around her head to wipe tears, the middle-aged woman blankly stares at her mobile phone.<br /><br />As neighbours recount the sequence of events “that morning”, the woman’s husband remains stoic. The couple’s youngest child was raped and murdered when she went to relieve herself in the field like “any other day” on July 14. On the same day, police found the six-year-old girl’s body in an under-constructing house, 50 metres away from her home. <br /><br />The accused, 24-year-old Ravinder Kumar, was arrested on July 18. He was a resident of neighbouring Sukhbir Nagar in Karala village.<br /><br />A week since his arrest, “serial rapist” Ravinder has been making disturbing revelations about his past crimes. So far, he has admitted to involvement in 38 cases of murder and rape of minors – all under 14 years – in Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and Haryana since 2009.<br /><br />On the fateful day, his last victim had been getting ready for school. “She went to the fields like she used to on other days. When she did not return for a while, we started looking for her. It was much later that we discovered her body. We have to live with the sight of the body forever. It was gruesome,” says the man living next door to the girl’s family.<br /><br />A few days back, she had told her brother she was leaving home after having fought with him. “We fought and she packed her schoolbag and told me she will not stay here; she was six but spoke like an adult,” says her elder brother with a trace of smile on his face. Neighbours knew her as the “talkative child” in the locality.<br /><br />“The last time I met her she asked me why I am looking so sick. She assured me I will recover soon. She was so mature that you could have a conversation with her,” says an 80-year-old neighbour. <br /><br />A five-foot-five-inch man, Ravinder has admitted to having tendencies of necrophilia – the urge to have sex with dead bodies. He told police he drew inspiration from a 1992 Bollywood film Maa where an actor was shown raping and murdering children. <br /><br />Ravinder has also confessed that he was always on the lookout for the next child-victim since his release from Tihar Jail on May 18. A background check reveals that he had been arrested for the rape and attempted murder of a child in 2014, but had been released due to insufficient evidence.<br /><br />In what has come as a shock to police, Ravinder has claimed to have sexually abused the corpses of 32 among 38 minors he brutally killed, say investigative officials.<br /><br />“Ravinder comes up with details about his crimes during interrogation. He talks of the season or month he had committed a crime, and the rest is verified using police records,” says Deputy Commissioner of Police (Outer) Vikramjit Singh.<br /><br />According to the girl’s family, there has been no help from the government since the incident. “There has been no help from the government since the incident. Nobody has visited the family. The MLA spoke to the girl’s parents once over the phone,” says another neighbour.<br /><br />Locals point out that the neighbourhood is unsafe. There are no streetlights in the area and huge plots remain unoccupied, which makes children easy victims of assault. “Here now, every moment we are living in fear. Is there any assurance my children will not be the next?” says a mother of three school-going girls in the area.<br />“If I had only known that day what was awaiting her. I cannot still imagine the fate my little girl met with,” says the victim’s mother. She has two school-going sons. The girl was the youngest of the three.<br /><br />Locals feel the government has taken no effort to enhance the security in the area. This is not the first such case here. Last year, a boy was sodomised and left in a septic tank with a deep cut in his neck. Ravinder was the accused in the case. He was arrested and later released on bail. “How are such criminals let out to come back and repeat the crime?” says another neighbour.<br /><br />The boy’s house is a five-minute walk from the latest victim’s house. “I think my child was lucky to have survived. He lives with the trauma of course. I was sleeping at night with my children when he lifted one of them and brutally assaulted him,” says the mother of the seven-year-old survivor.<br /><br />She has the same tale, of no help reaching the family since last year. “My son was admitted in a government hospital for a few days. Later, I brought him home and bore the treatment cost from the little that I earn as a domestic help. Even though my husband visited us after the incident, he lives separately,” she adds.</p>.<p><br />As she points to the deep cut in his neck, the child struggles with other kids in the locality to ride a cycle. “It is good if he doesn’t remember what happened.”<br />According to psychiatrists, there is little hope for rehabilitation of the perpetrators of such crimes. “They cannot be really rehabilitated. They will need to be under high security even in the long term,” says a senior psychiatrist at a state government-run institute. <br /><br />Police officers echo the same view. Easy bail in such crimes can prove disastrous, as it did with Ravinder, they believe. Delhi Police spokesperson Rajan Bhagat says conditional bail, such as periodic visit to a police station or an NGO for attendance, and possible rehabilitation and watch can prevent repeat crime. “Without this, in totality, children, mostly girls, will continue to be lost to such necrophilics and data shows such cases are rising,” he says.<br /><br />Over 6,200 cases of missing children were filed last year as against 5,554 cases in 2013. Interrogation revealed Ravinder reportedly committed his first crime when he was barely 17. He allegedly kidnapped a labourer’s child from a Delhi Metro construction site, raped her and dumped the body. Her parents, however, did not report the case.<br /><br />In another incident, Ravinder claims he had raped and murdered a child in 2011 and dumped the body in a pond in outer Delhi. A police team visited the spot, but no body parts were recovered.<br /><br />Locals have corroborated Ravinder’s disclosures. Police have found an eyewitness who claims to have seen Ravinder kidnapping a minor girl from outer Delhi’s Samaypur Badli in 2014. The probe so far has revealed that the victims were children of the poor playing near their homes. <br /><br />Their parents are mostly daily wage labourers who live on construction sites or on the roads.<br /><br />“Every time Ravinder is questioned on the places he visited, he talks of his involvement in a new case,” Singh adds.<br /><br />The investigating officers, however, are finding it difficult to gather evidence. Due to lack of evidence, a court on Thursday even turned down a plea seeking extension of Ravinder’s police custody and sent him to judicial custody for a fortnight. </p>.<p>Police learnt that Ravinder usually consumed alcohol with two of his friends, Dharmender and Kishan. They watched pornographic movies and looked out for children. The investigating officers suspect that Dharmender and Kishan may also be rapists and are now trying to nab the duo. “We fear Ravinder may escape due to lack of evidence and eyewitnesses in the cases,” Singh says. </p>.<p>The case came to the fore a day after a report compiled by PricewaterCoopers India and the NGO Save the Children warned of an alarming rise in crimes against children in Delhi and Mumbai. According to the report, there was a 24 per cent increase in such crimes between 2010 and 2011 and a further 52.5 per cent rise from 2012 to 2013.<br /><br />In Begampur, in closely situated streets, two families are trying to put in the pieces together. “Nothing matters now. I have lost my child,” says the father of the girl.<br /></p>
<p>She quietly sits in a corner clasping a passport size photograp of her daughter. Occasionally, using a green dupatta draped around her head to wipe tears, the middle-aged woman blankly stares at her mobile phone.<br /><br />As neighbours recount the sequence of events “that morning”, the woman’s husband remains stoic. The couple’s youngest child was raped and murdered when she went to relieve herself in the field like “any other day” on July 14. On the same day, police found the six-year-old girl’s body in an under-constructing house, 50 metres away from her home. <br /><br />The accused, 24-year-old Ravinder Kumar, was arrested on July 18. He was a resident of neighbouring Sukhbir Nagar in Karala village.<br /><br />A week since his arrest, “serial rapist” Ravinder has been making disturbing revelations about his past crimes. So far, he has admitted to involvement in 38 cases of murder and rape of minors – all under 14 years – in Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and Haryana since 2009.<br /><br />On the fateful day, his last victim had been getting ready for school. “She went to the fields like she used to on other days. When she did not return for a while, we started looking for her. It was much later that we discovered her body. We have to live with the sight of the body forever. It was gruesome,” says the man living next door to the girl’s family.<br /><br />A few days back, she had told her brother she was leaving home after having fought with him. “We fought and she packed her schoolbag and told me she will not stay here; she was six but spoke like an adult,” says her elder brother with a trace of smile on his face. Neighbours knew her as the “talkative child” in the locality.<br /><br />“The last time I met her she asked me why I am looking so sick. She assured me I will recover soon. She was so mature that you could have a conversation with her,” says an 80-year-old neighbour. <br /><br />A five-foot-five-inch man, Ravinder has admitted to having tendencies of necrophilia – the urge to have sex with dead bodies. He told police he drew inspiration from a 1992 Bollywood film Maa where an actor was shown raping and murdering children. <br /><br />Ravinder has also confessed that he was always on the lookout for the next child-victim since his release from Tihar Jail on May 18. A background check reveals that he had been arrested for the rape and attempted murder of a child in 2014, but had been released due to insufficient evidence.<br /><br />In what has come as a shock to police, Ravinder has claimed to have sexually abused the corpses of 32 among 38 minors he brutally killed, say investigative officials.<br /><br />“Ravinder comes up with details about his crimes during interrogation. He talks of the season or month he had committed a crime, and the rest is verified using police records,” says Deputy Commissioner of Police (Outer) Vikramjit Singh.<br /><br />According to the girl’s family, there has been no help from the government since the incident. “There has been no help from the government since the incident. Nobody has visited the family. The MLA spoke to the girl’s parents once over the phone,” says another neighbour.<br /><br />Locals point out that the neighbourhood is unsafe. There are no streetlights in the area and huge plots remain unoccupied, which makes children easy victims of assault. “Here now, every moment we are living in fear. Is there any assurance my children will not be the next?” says a mother of three school-going girls in the area.<br />“If I had only known that day what was awaiting her. I cannot still imagine the fate my little girl met with,” says the victim’s mother. She has two school-going sons. The girl was the youngest of the three.<br /><br />Locals feel the government has taken no effort to enhance the security in the area. This is not the first such case here. Last year, a boy was sodomised and left in a septic tank with a deep cut in his neck. Ravinder was the accused in the case. He was arrested and later released on bail. “How are such criminals let out to come back and repeat the crime?” says another neighbour.<br /><br />The boy’s house is a five-minute walk from the latest victim’s house. “I think my child was lucky to have survived. He lives with the trauma of course. I was sleeping at night with my children when he lifted one of them and brutally assaulted him,” says the mother of the seven-year-old survivor.<br /><br />She has the same tale, of no help reaching the family since last year. “My son was admitted in a government hospital for a few days. Later, I brought him home and bore the treatment cost from the little that I earn as a domestic help. Even though my husband visited us after the incident, he lives separately,” she adds.</p>.<p><br />As she points to the deep cut in his neck, the child struggles with other kids in the locality to ride a cycle. “It is good if he doesn’t remember what happened.”<br />According to psychiatrists, there is little hope for rehabilitation of the perpetrators of such crimes. “They cannot be really rehabilitated. They will need to be under high security even in the long term,” says a senior psychiatrist at a state government-run institute. <br /><br />Police officers echo the same view. Easy bail in such crimes can prove disastrous, as it did with Ravinder, they believe. Delhi Police spokesperson Rajan Bhagat says conditional bail, such as periodic visit to a police station or an NGO for attendance, and possible rehabilitation and watch can prevent repeat crime. “Without this, in totality, children, mostly girls, will continue to be lost to such necrophilics and data shows such cases are rising,” he says.<br /><br />Over 6,200 cases of missing children were filed last year as against 5,554 cases in 2013. Interrogation revealed Ravinder reportedly committed his first crime when he was barely 17. He allegedly kidnapped a labourer’s child from a Delhi Metro construction site, raped her and dumped the body. Her parents, however, did not report the case.<br /><br />In another incident, Ravinder claims he had raped and murdered a child in 2011 and dumped the body in a pond in outer Delhi. A police team visited the spot, but no body parts were recovered.<br /><br />Locals have corroborated Ravinder’s disclosures. Police have found an eyewitness who claims to have seen Ravinder kidnapping a minor girl from outer Delhi’s Samaypur Badli in 2014. The probe so far has revealed that the victims were children of the poor playing near their homes. <br /><br />Their parents are mostly daily wage labourers who live on construction sites or on the roads.<br /><br />“Every time Ravinder is questioned on the places he visited, he talks of his involvement in a new case,” Singh adds.<br /><br />The investigating officers, however, are finding it difficult to gather evidence. Due to lack of evidence, a court on Thursday even turned down a plea seeking extension of Ravinder’s police custody and sent him to judicial custody for a fortnight. </p>.<p>Police learnt that Ravinder usually consumed alcohol with two of his friends, Dharmender and Kishan. They watched pornographic movies and looked out for children. The investigating officers suspect that Dharmender and Kishan may also be rapists and are now trying to nab the duo. “We fear Ravinder may escape due to lack of evidence and eyewitnesses in the cases,” Singh says. </p>.<p>The case came to the fore a day after a report compiled by PricewaterCoopers India and the NGO Save the Children warned of an alarming rise in crimes against children in Delhi and Mumbai. According to the report, there was a 24 per cent increase in such crimes between 2010 and 2011 and a further 52.5 per cent rise from 2012 to 2013.<br /><br />In Begampur, in closely situated streets, two families are trying to put in the pieces together. “Nothing matters now. I have lost my child,” says the father of the girl.<br /></p>
