Thane man arrested for raping teenager, accomplice on the run

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A Thane man was arrested in Kalyan in Thane district on suspicion of raping a teenage girl, a police official said on Sunday, news agency PTI reported.

Another person is still being sought in this case and efforts are being made to nab him, an official at the MFC police station said.

The arrested accused has been identified as Anish Pandey while the absconding man is Abhishek Dere, the official said, according to PTI.

“The Thane man took the girl to a remote place on June 6 after lying that her father had called her. The accused forced her to drink alcohol and raped her. The other person filmed the act. She was found in an intoxicated state near her house after which her relatives contacted the police,” he said, according to PTI.

In another case, police on Sunday arrested an autorickshaw driver and a tailor on suspicion of kidnapping a six-month-old boy in Maharashtra’s Thane district, an official told PTI.

The child was rescued from the tailor’s house in Ulhasnagar, he said.

The autorickshaw driver abducted the toddler as he was sleeping with his mother, a garbage woman, on a footpath on Murbad Road in Kalyan area in the early hours of Friday, Sachin Gunjal, deputy superintendent of police, Zone III in Kalyan, told reporters.

The woman later lodged a complaint with the MFC police, who filed an FIR under Section 363 of the Indian Penal Code (kidnapping) and launched a search for her child with three teams, he said.

The teams followed several leads, including CCTV footage, intelligence inputs and technical information, and zeroed in on the autorickshaw driver, identified as Dinesh Bhaiyallal Saroj (35), the official said, according to PTI.

The autorickshaw driver led police to the other accused, Ankitkumar Rajendrakumar Prajapati (25), a tailor by profession, he said, PTI reported.

The police have traced Prajapati and found the child in his house, the official said, according to PTI.

The child was subsequently rescued and handed over to his mother, he said.

While questioning the accused, police learned that the autorickshaw driver, while passing by the road, noticed that the child was sleeping with his mother. He then quietly picked up the child and took him to the tailor, the officer said, according to PTI.

The police have invoked sections 370 (trafficking in persons) and 365 (abduction or abduction with intent to secretly and unlawfully confine a person) of the International Penal Code (IPC) in the case against the two accused, he said.

(With inputs from PTI)