Car driver arrested on rape charge

Teenaged victim not gang-raped, say police

The accused in the rape case of a teenager at Narayanaguda turned out to be a car driver, K. Venkatesh, the police said on Monday, after arresting him. They also confirmed that the victim was not gang-raped.

The Additional CP (co-ordination), A.R. Anuradha, said the victim had been meeting the accused for quite some time. On Sunday, he had picked up the girl after she came out of the church near Shanti theatre. The teenager who was with her visually challenged mother told the latter that she would return soon after meeting a friend and left the place, Ms. Anuradha said at a press conference here on Monday.

The accused drove the teenager to a commercial complex near Cherma's showroom at Abids. The 23-year-old Venkatesh from Nalgonda was hired by a car owner whose vehicle was rented out to an Assistant Commissioner of the CT department, office of whom was located in the complex.

The teenager and the driver spent some time in the cellar of the building after which she started bleeding. At Venkatesh's instance, she rang up her mother from his mobile phone explaining her condition. Later, he drove the teenager back to the church, from where he picked up the girl's mother and proceeded to the nearby Sai Ram hospital.

He waited till the hospital staff wheel-chaired her inside and disappeared. “The hospital watchman witnessed this,” Narayanaguda Inspector C. Gandhinarayana said. After extending first aid, the doctors decided to shift her to a Government hospital as it turned into a medico-legal case after the local police team arrived there. The girl was first shifted to the Osmania General Hospital in an ambulance and then moved to the Government Maternity Hospital, Puranapul. The police launched a hunt for the accused after registering a rape case following a complaint from her mother. They traced the phone call received by the mother to Venkatesh and caught him.

Venkatesh claimed that he had been meeting the teenager for over a year but the call data record of their phones suggested they were in contact for the past three months. Venkatesh is a cousin of the teenager's friend Laxmi. She met Venkatesh for the first time at Laxmi's village in Nalgonda a few months ago. Earlier in the day, former Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu called on the victim at the hospital and announced an aid of Rs.50,000 to her. BJP MLA G. Kishan Reddy and representatives of women organisations too met the girl.