The driver of a private school bus raped a mother of three inside his vehicle near Nayandahalli in West Bengaluru on Tuesday.
Police arrested the accused Shivakumar, 40, a resident of Nayandahalli. The rape survivor, who lives in Nagarabhavi, works as an ayah (peon) in another private school.
Police said the woman was waiting for a bus near Nayandahalli junction after finishing work and found the private school bus driven by Shivakumar heading towards her. She waved at the bus for a drop-off.
Shivakumar stopped the bus and claimed that he was also heading towards Nagarabhavi and offered her a ride. Soon after she got into the vehicle around 5.30 pm, Shivakumar drove towards Male Mahadeshwara temple in Kailasagiri, around three km from Nayandahalli junction, and stopped the bus on the roadside. He assaulted and threatened her and raped her inside the bus.
He dropped her off around 7 pm after warning her not to approach the police or inform anyone about the incident.
But after getting off the bus, she clicked a picture of the vehicle along with the registration number and shared it with her 20-year-old son and informed him she was raped by the driver.
On reaching home, her son teamed up with his friends and went in search of the bus as his mother had mentioned that she had seen the vehicle and the driver a few times in Nayandahalli.
They traced the bus around 8.30 pm at Nayandahalli. The driver was heavily drunk by then.
The victim’s son and his friends hauled him out of the bus and got into an altercation. Local people who saw them fighting alerted the police, having no knowledge about what the driver had done.
Chandra Layout police learnt about the rape from the woman’s son.
Laxman B Nimbargi, Deputy Commissioner of Police (West), said: “We have subjected the victim to a medical test. A team of officials from the Forensic Science Laboratory has collected the evidence from the bus and from the victim. We have arrested the accused under charges of rape, attempted murder, wrongful restraint and other relevant IPC sections.”
The woman told police that she had seen Shivakumar a few times as he used to pass through the same road every day, but they were not friends or acquaintances.