One of India’s oldest female scribes raped, murdered

New Delhi: An octogenarian widow was allegedly sexually assaulted and murdered by her 21-year-old domestic help, who later set the house on fire to make the crime look like an accident in South-east Delhi's Greater Kailash-II area. The victim, Rekha Duggal, 81, was one of the first woman journalists of India.

Despite repeated attempts Deputy Commissioner of Police (South-east) P. Karunakaran couldn't be reached for a confirmation of whether Duggal was raped, but sources claimed that under sustained interrogation and after the preliminary autopsy report, the accused, Neeraj Saki, broke down and disclosed that he first raped and then strangled her.

Sources said that the accused initially tried to mislead the investigators after claiming that he last saw Duggal going for an evening walk.

"The victim would bathe everyday before going for a walk at 6pm. On Monday around 6.45pm, Neeraj forcibly took her to a room on the second floor and sexually assaulted her, after which she fell unconscious. "This scared Neeraj and he strangled the victim with her chunni and then poured petrol on her when she was lying unconscious and set the house on fire to present it as a case of accidental fire," a police officer quoted Neeraj from the probe report.

Sources said Neeraj, who was arrested on Tuesday afternoon, is a native of Madhubani in Bihar. He was employed by the victim around eight months ago. "Neeraj claimed he was annoyed by frequent scolding, which led him to commit the crime. He used to watch the victim when she took her bath," the source added.

A senior police officer said the victim was among the first batch of mass communication students at Panjab University, and her husband K.K. Duggal, who died in 2005, was editor of UNI.

The police are also probing a robbery angle. "I was outside the victim home when Neeraj approached me and said Duggal was missing. I suggested him to go and first check in the park where she went for walk and the home," said Renuka, a neighbour. After around 15 minutes, Renuka's mother Saroj Prakash called up Duggal's son-in-law Manmohan and informed him that her mother-in-law had gone missing.

"We gave photographs of my mother to the police as Neeraj was constantly claiming that he had checked everywhere," Manmohan said. But they got the shock of their lives when they later went inside the second floor of the house. "The house was full of smoke and nothing was visible… I saw my mother lying on the bed, slightly charred with a duppatta around her neck," said her daughter Sadhana.

Doctors found ligature marks on her neck suggesting that she was strangled. She had also suffered 60 per cent burns.