User:Utcursch/Arrest of Ravinder Kumar

In July 2015, the Delhi Police arrested Ravinder Kumar for rape and murder of a 9-year old girl. After interrogation, the police claimed that Kumar was a serial killer, who had confessed to murdering and raping over 30 children during 2008-2015. The police presented Kumar to the media, and Kumar confessed to the crimes in front of the media. Kumar's parents claimed that the police had falsely implicated him in these cases, and had tortured him into making a confession. In July 2015, the police claimed that they have been able to find evidence against Kumar in 11 of the cases he allegedly confessed his involvement in.

Ravinder Kumar
Ravinder Kumar (born 1992) was born into a poor family at Ganjdundwara village in Badaun district of Uttar Pradesh. He came to Delhi in 2007 with his parents and four siblings, when his father - a plumber - moved to Karala. He dropped out of school after Class 5. According to police, Kumar stated that he had been sodomized by two children when he was 11 years old, and also in 2015, when he was lodged in the Rohini jail. In Dehli, he was working as a bus cleaner at the time of his arrest.

The arrest
On 14 July 2015, a 9-year-old child was reported missing in Delhi's Begum Pur area, after having gone out of her house for open defecation. On the same day, the police found the child's dead body in a semi-constructed three-story house, located 50 m away from her home. An autopsy revealed that she had been sexually assaulted. The police searched the crime scene, and found some papers and a driving licence on the second floor. The licence belonged to one Sunny, whom the police tracked down to a hospital. Sunny claimed that he had been beaten by his friend Ravinder Kumar, his brother Sunil and a juvenile on 14 July. The trio allegedly robbed him of his bike, mobile phone and wallet, which contained his licence. The police performed a background check on Sunny as well as the three men named by him. Sunny's version was corroborated by a call that his mother had made to the Police Control Room on 14 July; she had told the police that her son had been robbed and beaten by his friends. A background check on Ravinder Kumar revealed that he had been arrested for the rape and attempted murder of a child in 2014, but had been released for want of sufficient evidence, on 18 May.

The police traced Kumar to his uncle's home in Govindpuri, where he allegedly confessed to the rape and murder in Begum Pur. Later, a police team interrogated him further, showing him around 100 pictures of children who had gone missing in past six years. He first identified a girl who had gone missing from Samaypur-Badli area, and admitted to kidnapping, sexually assaulting and killing her. He went on to allegedly confess that he had targeted 15 children (and killed 11 of them) in Delhi and Uttar Pradesh during 2009-2015. Police also suspected his involvement in a few 2010 cases, which he did not confess to. A day later, the police claimed that Kumar had admitted his involvement in 30 cases in Delhi, UP and Haryana, during 2008-2015. By 22 July, the number of victims was reported to be 38.

Modus operandi
According to the police, Kumar said that he had been influenced by the movie Maa, in which a character raped and murdered children. He picked his early victims from places he would visit with his father, a plumber, for work.

Kumar allegedly told police that he would go around colonies, looking for children playing outside their house, or near latrines. He would then lure them with money and sweets; if they refused, he would gag and abduct them. He raped and killed some of the victims, and had sex with dead bodies of some other victims. In exceptional cases, he would let the victims go after raping them, if they agreed not to reveal the crime. He used to consume alcohol with his close friends - Dharmender and Kishan – and watched pornographic movies. He then used to set out with his friends to lure children, kidnap, rape and murder them eventually. He usually committed these crimes in the afternoon or in the early hours.

Victims
According to the Delhi police, Kumar confessed to having murdered 38 children, and to having sexually assaulted the corpses of 32 of his victims. His alleged crimes include:


 * 2008: Kumar confessed that at the age of 17, he abducted a labourer's girl from a Metro construction site in Delhi. He then raped the girl, and killed her. However, the Delhi Police could not find any record of such a crime.


 * 2009: Kidnapped a labourer's son from Vijay Vihar, sodomized him, and then strangled him to death. A case was registered, but Kumar escaped arrest due to insufficient evidence.


 * 2011: Kidnapped a child from Kanjhawala, raped her and killed her. In his confession, Kumar stated that he had dumped the body in a pond. However, the police did not find any body parts in the pond. The police claimed that the incident of missing child was "corroborated by locals and it matched with Kumar's disclosures".


 * 2011: Two months after the Kanjhawala murder, Kumar said that he raped and killed a 2½-year-old girl in Mundka, and dumping her body in a forest. The interrogators checked the records of Mundka police, and found that the case made no mention of a sexual assault. The police stated that they would investigate the possibility of laxity by the police officers or the doctors who conducted the autopsies.


 * 2012: Raped two 14-year-old children of a relative, while visiting Aligarh for a wedding. He let the victims go, after they promised not to tell anyone about the crimes.


 * 2012: Sexually assaulted two boys in Aligarh.


 * 2012: Raped and killed 6-year old girl.


 * 2013: Kidnapped, raped and murdered a 5-year-old girl in Nagla Chandan village of Hathras, Uttar Pradesh. Kumar allegedly confessed that he committed the crime, while on a visit to his maternal uncle's home. After Kumar's arrest, when the Delhi police contacted the Nagla Chandan police station, they found out that the case had already been closed in 2013. The UP Police had arrested the girl's father for the murder, and he had been in jail since 2013. The UP Police report made no mention of a sexual assault. According to them, the girl's father had killed the girl by strangling her, and tried to shift the blame on four other people, who he had an enmity with. The UP police had initially arrested these four people, but later charged the father.


 * 2013: Kidnapped two girls from Noida's Sector 74 and 76, near a Metro construction site. He allegedly murdered them, and then sexually abused their dead bodies. He was then working as a cleaner with the contractor of a transport company. The families of the victims were labourers, and the crimes were not reported to the police. The police claim that the victims' families left for "unknown destinations" after the crime.


 * 2014: Kumar confessed to having kidnapped, sexually assaulted and murdered a 2½-year-old girl from Samaypur-Badli area. The girl's body was found in a drain. However, when the police checked the case in their records, they found no mention of sexual assault: only a case of kidnapping and murder had been registered. Again, the police stated that they would investigate the possibility of laxity by the police officers or the doctors who conducted the autopsies. The police have reportedly found an eye-witness who saw Kumar abducting the girl.


 * 2 June 2014: Kumar and another man allegedly abducted a 6-year-old boy from his home at Jain Nagar in Begumpur between 1:30-2:00 am. The boy and his family, who are migrants from Bihar, were sleeping out in the open, as there was no electricity and the weather was hot. The men took him to a house, where they first molested him, and then sodomized him after drugging him. They then bludgeoned him on the head, and slit his throat and left him in a ditch located around a hundred feet from the boy's home. After nearly 24 hours, the boy was found unconscious in the ditch. Kumar was arrested by the police in this case, but he was released on 18 May 2015, after the victim could not identify him. Kumar's parents and a neighbour claimed that he had been falsely implicated in the case by a neighbour, who he had an altercation with.


 * 14 July 2015: Kumar allegedly lured a 9-year-old girl Begum Pur in Delhi, by promising to give her ₹ 10. He took her to an abandoned house, and sexually assaulted her, and choked her to death when she screamed. Again, Kumar was arrested and charged in this case.

Investigation
On 20 July 2015, the Delhi Police claimed that they had been able to corroborate Kumar's involvement in 11 cases, after verifying the police records. According to the investigators, Kumar remembered minute details that matched with the FIRs registered when these cases were reported. The police also recovered clothes of victims from some of the spots mentioned by him. He stated that he had dropped a mobile phone at one place; the police recovered this mobile phone as well.

However, the Delhi Police could not find any evidence against him in 16 other cases. The Uttar Pradesh police stated that they have not been able to find any records of crimes that he confessed to have committed in Uttar Pradesh, except the Aligarh case. The Delhi police claim that Kumar would often target children from poor and illiterate families, who did not know how to file a police complaint, and who moved to "unknown places" without reporting the incident to the police out of shame and fear of retribution.

Ravinder's parents claimed that he had been falsely implicated, and had been beaten up into making confessions. The police denied the torture accusation. Kumar's lawyer RK Sharma complained that the police had violated his rights by presenting him to media, and making him confess the crimes despite not having been convicted.

On 23 July, a Delhi court sent Kumar to a 14-day judicial custody.