On the night of August 4, a minor student was gangraped inside a bus plying the Delhi–NCR roads. The bus (registration number UP83 ET 3789) had entered Delhi from Noida and continued to ply the roads of both cities for hours while the conductor and driver subjected the girl to brutal sexual assault.

According to reports, the Delhi Police arrested the accused within hours of the incident. However, the incident became public only on August 31 – 27 days after it occurred. The Delhi Police investigation seems to have triggered some unease within Noida police ranks, according to sources, with the latter alleging they were kept entirely in the dark and first learnt of the crime only from the media.

What the Delhi Police say happened

On August 31, Niharika Bhatt, Deputy Commissioner of Police, North Delhi, publicly disclosed details of the case. She said that on the night of August 4, a 17-year-old girl had walked into the Kashmere Gate police station and reported that she had been raped on a bus in Noida.

According to Bhatt, the victim revealed she had been travelling from Mainpuri district in Uttar Pradesh to a relative’s house in Noida’s Sector 63. She boarded a bus at Pari Chowk in Greater Noida believing it was headed to Sector 63. Instead, she was allegedly raped on board the bus. The driver and conductor eventually forced her off the bus on the Ring Road in Delhi, which lies within the jurisdiction of the Kashmere Gate police station, and fled.

Given the gravity of the case, Bhatt said that the Kashmere Gate police station moved immediately, without getting bogged down in questions of jurisdiction, claiming that they arranged the victim’s medical examination, registered a case, traced the bus through CCTV footage within hours and arrested both the accused. The girl was eventually produced before the Child Welfare Committee and handed over to her family on its orders. 

The investigation is ongoing.

Even as it moved quickly to register the case and make arrests, the Delhi Police kept it under wraps for the next 27 days, including from the Noida police whose jurisdiction the crime would have fallen under, going by the Delhi Police’s own account. 

Speaking to Newslaundry on condition of anonymity, an officer of the Noida police said, “We........

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