Two months after a woman and her boyfriend were allegedly murdered by three men affiliated to the Rajesh Bawania gang in Kanjhawala, police are yet to recover their mobile phones which the accused had dumped in a drain in the area. The Delhi Police Crime Branch has approached the Union Ministry of Defence, asking it to provide an electronic metal detector to locate the phones.
Sources said police personnel from the southeastern range — who arrested the accused — visited the crime scene to collect evidence.
“They tried to trace the mobile phones of the victims. Divers searched the canal near the drain to look for the phones to no avail. The case was then transferred to another unit of the crime branch,” sources added.
“Recently, a letter was written to a major-rank officer, posted at the Delhi Cantonment, by the investigating officer in the case. He requested him to provide an electronic metal detector, which police could use to find the phones in the 3-feet deep drain. The device is used by forces to detect underground mines. However, the officer rejected his request. He asked him to come through a proper channel, and to send the letter to another senior officer,” sources said.
The accused — Jasbir Dabas, Devender Kumar and Manjeet along with their two associates — had allegedly raped the 38-year-old woman in front of her 23-year-old boyfriend and later strangled the duo.
During investigation, local police had initially arrested her husband and a relative in connection with the murders. On April 26, police conducted raids in villages in outer Delhi and apprehended the three accused.
While conducting the postmortem, police had preserved vaginal swabs of the woman as they failed to establish sexual assault. “The investigating officer has sent the vaginal swabs for a forensic test,” sources said.