The 23-year-old former domestic employee, who allegedly raped and murdered a 22-year-old woman in south Delhi’s Kailash Hills area on Wednesday morning, dragged the victim from the fourth floor to the third floor in a failed attempt to open the fingerprint access locker, investigators familiar with the details of the case said on Thursday.
The victim, an Indian Institute of Technology graduate and UPSC aspirant, was allegedly raped and strangled with a mobile phone charger cable by the suspect Rahul Meena, who was arrested on Wednesday evening.
Meena, who hails from Alwar in Rajasthan where he was wanted for sexually assaulting another woman on Tuesday night, was working at home and gained entry after exploiting a narrow window when her parents went out in the morning to go to the gym.
I knew where the key was
According to a senior police officer, Meena entered the house at 6.39 am using a smart key that the family kept outside the main door near the shoe rack, which the domestic help – including Meena learned about.
Meena told cops that the victim was studying when he broke into her room. “He said he immediately asked for money to pay off the debt, but she refused and told him to leave. They argued, and then started calling her father. Before she could, he first clamped down on her throat, then used a charger cord to strangle her, then attacked her with a water bottle and a lamp on her head. She lost consciousness,” an officer said.
She was raped while she was alive but unconscious
Mina then allegedly raped her “while she was still alive, but unconscious” and then dragged her down the stairs in an attempt to use her biometric data to open a fingerprint-protected safe. A second officer said: “He knew that the lock could only be opened using the fingerprints of the four family members. Then he tried to use her finger to open the lock, but he failed. Therefore, he broke it using a heavy object.”
The accused wandered off $1.5-2 lakh in cash and jewelery worth approx $10 lakh in a black backpack he found at home and left. He told police that he had changed his blood-stained pants and shoes.
Postmortem reveals the horror
An autopsy confirmed that the victim died due to strangulation after a violent assault, according to a senior official at AIIMS, where an autopsy was conducted on the victim’s body. The official, who requested anonymity, said the body bore multiple external injuries, including abrasions and bruises to the arms, hands and legs, along with multiple lacerations and abrasions to the face and a broken nasal bone.
An autopsy of the neck revealed intramuscular hemorrhages in multiple muscles, and both thyroid cartilage horns were fractured. The official said, “The deceased died of suffocation after being assaulted.” Multiple samples were sent for forensic examination to confirm that a sexual assault had occurred.
Wanted for sexual assault in Alwar
During the investigation, the police found that the accused arrived in Delhi after an hours-long encounter in Alwar village. “He allegedly sexually assaulted his friend’s wife. She raised the alarm. Many villagers gathered. He ran to the top of a hill called Kali Pahari and hid there for two-and-a-half hours until the villagers left,” an officer said.
Once the coast was clear, he got out, stole a bike and headed to a wedding party he allegedly hit “for dinner” around 1am. He then took a motorbike, reached the highway leading to Delhi, and waited near a petrol pump. He hired a truck at around 2am and reached Kailash Hills around 5.30am, where he waited for the victim’s parents to leave before entering at 6.39am.
A police team tracked Meena using technical surveillance, but the South Eastern District Police had already arrested him. The accused spent around $7,000 of the stolen money and the rest were recovered. Meena was arrested from a hotel in Dwarka at 8 pm on Wednesday, police said.
