A day after the Uttarakhand Police arrested five people for the alleged sexual assault of a 16-year-old girl inside a bus parked at Dehradun ISBT, a Special Investigation Team (SIT) was constituted on Monday to probe the case. Dehradun Senior Superintendent of Police Ajai Singh said police have also deployed a surveillance team to collect footage of the entire journey of the Uttarakhand Transport Corporation bus, from Delhi to Dehradun, on which the girl had travelled before the incident that took place. As per the investigation so far, the bus left Delhi’s Kashmiri Gate at 4.30 pm on August 12 and arrived in Dehradun at around 10.30 pm. It was the same bus in which the girl, a resident of Moradabad, was allegedly sexually assaulted in the ISBT parking lot. On August 13, at around 1.30 am, a guard at the Dehradun ISBT noticed a girl sitting at a shop while a man was talking to her. Finding this suspicious, the guard alerted the 1098 Child Helpline. Subsequently, the girl was taken into the custody of the State Child Welfare Committee (CWC) and placed in the Government Girls Home for her safety, police officers said. Later, during a counselling session, she said she was sexually assaulted. CWC members then lodged a complaint, based on which police registered an FIR against the five accused — Dharmendra Kumar (32), the driver of the bus on which the girl had travelled; Devendra (52), the conductor of the bus; Ravi Kumar (34), the driver of another government bus; Raj Pal (57), the driver a third government bus; Rajesh Kumar Sonker (38), a cash collector working with the state roadways. During the police investigation, Devendra was first identified using CCTV footage and was arrested. The four other names surfaced during his interrogation, police said. They also said that all the five accused confessed to the crime. According to SSP Singh, interrogation revealed that the accused driver of the Delhi-Dehradun bus noticed the girl at the Kashmiri Gate bus station even before she boarded the bus. According to police, the SIT formed to investigate the case is headed by Dehradun SP (City) Pramod Kumar. The team also comprises CO (Sadar) Anil Joshi, CO (Prem Nagar) Reena Rathore, Patel Nagar Police Station in-charge Kamal Kumar, in-charge SOG (City) Shankar Singh Bisht, SI Jyoti Kanyal, SI Viniyata Chauhan, and SI Ashish Kumar.
