NEW DELHI: The torture inflicted on a Swiss woman in a car and her eventual murder in west Delhi’s Tilak Nagar last week has brought back memories of the Siri Fort rape case exactly two decades ago. On October 15, 2003, a Swiss diplomat posted in the city was tortured and sexually assaulted in her own Qualis car after being abducted from Siri Fort.
The incident had set off a massive manhunt for the perpetrators of the crime, but the case was never solved. The last hope for the investigators led by Vivek Gogia, then DCP (South), were the composite facial sketches of the suspects they made based on the information provided by the victim besides a cigarette lighter and some fingerprints in the Qualis. However, these were of too little help because the police database of over 30,000 profiles did not find a match.
The incident had not only outraged the diplomatic community in the capital, but also raised serious questions about policing and law and order in Delhi at the time.
Recalling the incident, a senior cop said that the 36-year-old woman was returning home after watching a Chinese film. She had reached the parking lot around 10pm when the two assailants allegedly attacked her. As she opened the car door, the duo pushed her into the rear seat. “One of the men allegedly raped her, while the other drove through the streets of Safdarjung Enclave and south Delhi. After 30 minutes, she was dumped at Safdarjung Enclave and was given instructions on how to get back home,” an officer said, citing the statement she gave to police.
In her statement, the woman described the assailants as young men in their 20s who were well-dressed and spoke fluent English. One of them, she told the cops, was wearing a T-shirt. After recording her statement, the diplomat returned to Switzerland.
The cops, who continued the probe here, suspected that the assailants had followed the victim from the auditorium. They interrogated every ruffian in the area and also scanned the details of sex offenders and other criminals, but every effort led to a dead end.
The Swiss woman was incidentally not the only one targeted that night. Another woman, 27, was also attacked in a similar fashion but wasn’t sexually assaulted. She was accosted by two men when she was getting into her Maruti 800 car. They thrashed her after she threw her car keys away to save herself from being driven off. “A link between the two incidents was apparent. Both the women were also threatened with being shot six times by the suspects,” recalled anofficer.
Watch Swiss woman found murdered in Delhi in most gruesome manner, one suspect arrested
The incident had set off a massive manhunt for the perpetrators of the crime, but the case was never solved. The last hope for the investigators led by Vivek Gogia, then DCP (South), were the composite facial sketches of the suspects they made based on the information provided by the victim besides a cigarette lighter and some fingerprints in the Qualis. However, these were of too little help because the police database of over 30,000 profiles did not find a match.
The incident had not only outraged the diplomatic community in the capital, but also raised serious questions about policing and law and order in Delhi at the time.
Recalling the incident, a senior cop said that the 36-year-old woman was returning home after watching a Chinese film. She had reached the parking lot around 10pm when the two assailants allegedly attacked her. As she opened the car door, the duo pushed her into the rear seat. “One of the men allegedly raped her, while the other drove through the streets of Safdarjung Enclave and south Delhi. After 30 minutes, she was dumped at Safdarjung Enclave and was given instructions on how to get back home,” an officer said, citing the statement she gave to police.
In her statement, the woman described the assailants as young men in their 20s who were well-dressed and spoke fluent English. One of them, she told the cops, was wearing a T-shirt. After recording her statement, the diplomat returned to Switzerland.
The cops, who continued the probe here, suspected that the assailants had followed the victim from the auditorium. They interrogated every ruffian in the area and also scanned the details of sex offenders and other criminals, but every effort led to a dead end.
The Swiss woman was incidentally not the only one targeted that night. Another woman, 27, was also attacked in a similar fashion but wasn’t sexually assaulted. She was accosted by two men when she was getting into her Maruti 800 car. They thrashed her after she threw her car keys away to save herself from being driven off. “A link between the two incidents was apparent. Both the women were also threatened with being shot six times by the suspects,” recalled anofficer.
Watch Swiss woman found murdered in Delhi in most gruesome manner, one suspect arrested