New Delhi, Sep 1 (Inditop.com) An Indian who was nabbed by the Delhi Police here for raping a teenager in Germany 12 years ago will be prosecuted in India as Germany will not be seeking his extradition, an official said Tuesday.
Jaswant Singh, 36, was arrested Sunday night from his house in Adarsh Nagar in northwest Delhi by the Delhi Police’s crime branch after months of investigation. He had allegedly raped a teenager in Germany 12 years ago.
“Germany has not asked for his extradition. A case has been registered in India and the accused will be prosecuted here,” a German embassy official told Inditop.
The case against Singh is under Section 4 of the Indian Penal Code, in which an Indian citizen can be put to trial in any part of the country for a crime committed anywhere in the world.
“The German embassy has given its complaint to the Indian authorities,” the official added.
According to Delhi Police, Singh went to Germany in 1992 and was staying there illegally. In 1997, he along with two of his friends Karan Singh, an Indian, and Mohammad Shahzad, a Pakistani, raped a 17-year-old German girl at Darmstadt in Germany.
According to the police case, the victim was walking back home Aug 1, 1997, after missing her train when the three spotted her. Jaswant Singh dragged her inside a park, where he raped her. The other two also raped the girl.
The involvement of the three accused came to light when the owner of Le Petit restaurant, where Jaswant Singh was working as a chef, overheard him and Karan Singh talking about the incident and informed the police.
While the other two were arrested, Jaswant Singh managed to escape and went to Holland from where he returned to India.
Karan Singh and Shahzad were put on trial in Germany and sentenced to 10 and eight years’ imprisonment, respectively.
Since Jaswant Singh was absconding, the German embassy here forwarded copies of the records of the case to the external affairs ministry in 2008, asking that criminal proceedings be initiated against him, the official said.
The matter was then handed over to Delhi Police’s crime branch.
“The German authorities did not have much information about him. We just had his name and place of birth, which is Miani in Punjab’s Hoshiarpur area. Information regarding people with similar names and description who had arrived from Germany over the past few years was gathered. Sources were deployed in various locations in Punjab and the people engaged in facilitating immigration were also tapped,” a Delhi Police officer said Monday.
Jaswant Singh was running a transport business from an office in the national capital’s Sanjay Gandhi Transport Nagar area, the officer said.
