- By Aditya Jha
- Fri, 28 Feb 2025 07:27 AM (IST)
- Source:JND
The Maharashtra police on Friday arrested the man accused of raping a 26-year-old woman inside a bus at Swargate bus station of Pune. Dattatraya Ramdas Gade, the accused was arrested after almost 75 hours of manhunt from the Shrirur Tehsil. The police reportedly arrested the accused from one of the farm fields of the village where he was hiding.
The accused was absconding since the incident happened on Tuesday, Pune police stated. The incident happened while the working woman was waiting for a bus to return home to Phaltan, around 100 km away from police station.
The accused allegedly approached her and stated that the public bus was parked somewhere else. He led her to a MSRTC Shivsahi bus parked in the depot and allegedly raped her.
#WATCH | Pune (Maharashtra) bus rape case | The accused, Dattatray Ramdas Gade, has been detained by a team of Pune Crime Branch from a village in Shirur Tehsil of Pune district. He has now been brought to a Police Station here.
— ANI (@ANI) February 28, 2025
Visuals from outside the Police Station. pic.twitter.com/ZtBP6FWPtT
The incident took place in the early morning between 5.45 am and 6 am when the accused took the victim to a dark place where the bus was parked. The Pune police was searching for the accused as they had deployed drones and dogs in the suspected areas to trace the accused in the rape case.
While several of the opposition leaders, including NCP (Sharad) MP Supriya Sule, Shiv Sena (Uddhav) Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Raut and other leaders demanded a quick inquiry into the matter, adding that the women are no longer safe in the state. However, government officials had assured that the accused will soon get arrested.
"We condemn this incident. National Commission for Women has taken suo-moto cognizance of this case. We have written to Maharashtra DGP to investigate the case with promptness and submit a report to NCW. We have also asked him to provide security to the victim and put the accused behind bars. We have asked for the case to be heard in a fast-track court..." chairperson of National Commission for Women (NCW), Vijaya Kishore Rahatkar was quoted as saying by ANI.
The accused is also named in half a dozen cases of theft, robbery, and chain snatching in the Pune and Ahilyanagar districts. He has been out on bail since 2019 in one of the offences.