Cops hope to locate more victims, mull community outreach programmes

After the disturbing confessions of Sunil Rastogi, the paedophile rapist who molested minors all over North India, the East District team from Delhi Police have started community outreach programmes so that they may get in touch with any remaining victims.

The development comes after three fresh new cases surfaced wherein the victims have alleged that they were approached by Sunil. 

However, since the families of the victims were not willing to register an FIR, the police fear that they may not be able to make a watertight case against Sunil.

“We have planned community outreach programmes wherein we will have a dialogue with the community and instill confidence in them. As a part of the initiative, we plan on reaching the schools in Ashok Nagar area and also plan on reaching out to the slum clusters in the area,” said Deputy Commissioner of Police (East), Omvir Singh.

The police plan in finding out more about the victims from the outreach in twelve schools in the area. The case came to the fore when a victim was able to ascertain Sunil’s identity when she saw his sketch. Even before the police had started the initiative, the residents had started to reach the local schools in a bid to find out the victims.

Sushil Kumar Mishra was one such resident. “I was shocked when I heard about the serial rapist case. I knew about the girl who was sexually assaulted by Sunil. Later that day, I found a girl come near the photocopy store late in the evening, I told her to not go out in the night but her mother came and told me that Sunil tried to molest her as well. My blood boiled.”

The residents had claimed that in A block alone, ten such cases had come to the fore.  “I had started going around the schools in the area and we started distributing his sketches. We really wanted the silent victims to speak out,” Mishra added.

The reason the families do not want to register the case is because of the social stigma attached with being branded as a rape victim. Some of the families chose not to register the complaint as Sunil never managed to molest them. The father of a ten-year-old girl, who managed to flee from Sunil told this paper: “I did not report the case to the police as I did not want to go through the hassle of registering the case. She managed to escape and that was all that mattered.”