Bus Driver, Conductor Arrested for Gang-Raping Teen Picked Up at Pari Chowk
A 16-year-old girl was allegedly gang-raped inside a moving sleeper bus by its driver and conductor after she boarded the vehicle near Pari Chowk in Greater Noida on August 4, police said. Both accused men have been arrested.
The Class 11 student from Mainpuri had left home after being scolded by her mother and was travelling to her cousin's house in Noida Sector 63. She mistakenly got off at Pari Chowk around 9pm amid heavy rain. Realising she was still roughly 25km away from her destination, she began looking for transport when the bus stopped nearby.
According to police, the conductor told the girl that the bus was headed towards Sector 63 and would drop her there. The girl trusted him and boarded. However, the bus was not running a regular passenger service. It had previously been taken to a workshop in Surajpur, Greater Noida, for repairs after developing a technical fault, and the crew had picked it up earlier that evening.
Instead of travelling to Sector 63, the bus headed towards Delhi. During the journey, the girl alleged that the conductor made inappropriate advances towards her before both he and the driver sexually assaulted her. Police said the two men threatened to kill her when she resisted.
The bus travelled approximately 43km without stopping before the teenager was abandoned near Kashmere Gate in Delhi. She then took an auto-rickshaw to the Kashmere Gate police station to report the incident.
DCP (North) Niharika Bhatt said Delhi Police registered an FIR without getting into jurisdictional issues after the victim approached the station. A medical examination confirmed rape. The girl was subsequently produced before the Child Welfare Committee and handed over to her father.
Using CCTV footage, police traced the vehicle within hours and arrested driver Kuldeep, 39, and conductor Sandeep, 26, both residents of Kanpur, from a parking lot in north Delhi’s Timarpur. The bus was seized and the suspects underwent potency tests.
Monu, a manager at Vishwanath Travels, said the bus was undergoing renovation and its CCTV cameras were not operational. Police noted that curtains on the sleeper berths allegedly helped conceal the assault from outside view. Forensic teams discovered strands of the victim's hair inside the bus, and investigators are retracing the route taken across the Noida-Delhi border.
