Investigation underway after 16-year-old allegedly gang-raped on bus in Noida

Police have arrested two men accused of allegedly gang-raping a 16-year-old girl on a sleeper bus travelling from Greater Noida to Delhi, officials said. The incident occurred on the night of August 4.

According to police, the girl, a Class 11 student from Mainpuri in Uttar Pradesh, left home after being scolded by her mother and boarded a bus for Noida Sector 63, where her cousin lives. She mistakenly got off at Pari Chowk in Greater Noida amid heavy rain around 9 pm, and realised she was still about 25 km from her destination. As she searched for transport, a bus stopped near her.

Police said the conductor allegedly told her they were headed to Sector 63 and would drop her off there. The bus was not on regular passenger service that night, investigators and the travel company said, and had been taken to a workshop at Surajpur in Greater Noida for repairs after developing a technical fault. The two accused picked up the bus from the workshop around 5 pm and began their journey around 9 pm, travelling from Surajpur to Pari Chowk before proceeding towards Kashmere Gate.

The girl alleged in her complaint that she was gang-raped en route and then abandoned at Kashmere Gate, from where she managed to take an auto-rickshaw to the police station. Police said the bus was on the move when the rape occurred.

Police response

Delhi Police registered an FIR and launched a search to arrest the accused, without going into any jurisdiction issue, DCP (North) Niharika Bhatt said in a video statement. Police registered a case, arranged the girl's medical examination, and traced the bus using CCTV footage, The Times of India reported. The sleeper bus has been seized and is undergoing forensic examination.

The teenager was produced before the Child Welfare Committee and handed over to her father, The Times of India reported. The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has taken cognisance of the incident and issued notices to the authorities concerned.

Rahul Gandhi's criticism

Congress leader and Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi criticised the central and Uttar Pradesh governments over the alleged gang-rape, questioning the lack of accountability for police under Union Home Minister Amit Shah and Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath. In a post in Hindi on X, Gandhi said Delhi-NCR has become so unsafe for women that a minor girl was gang-raped for 47 km in a sleeper bus from Greater Noida to Delhi.

"Astonishingly, neither the entire Delhi police nor the Noida police had the slightest inkling of it," Gandhi wrote. "This bus crossed the Noida-Greater Noida Expressway, Delhi's Ring Road, the border -- all of it -- without being stopped even once at a single checkpoint."

Gandhi noted that curtains were drawn over the bus seats so no one could see what was happening inside, adding that the perpetrators had no fear of the administration whatsoever. He asked why rules for checking and monitoring such buses are still not being followed after so many years since the 'Nirbhaya' case.

"Those curtains weren't just drawn on that one bus - it is the result of curtains being drawn year after year by the government over the administration's failures, leaving women unable even to take a safe journey in the country's capital," he said.

Gandhi asked how many more women and girls will have to endure this before the central and state governments finally fix the system, and whether there will be any accountability for the Delhi Police under Amit Shah or the UP Police under Adityanath. "Not a chance, this crime, too, will just have a curtain drawn over it," he said.

The Economic Times reported that Gandhi made similar remarks in a post on X, and as reported by news agency ANI, he said the incident reflected the government's failure to protect women. The Economic Times's report also cited police as saying the girl was abandoned near Kashmere Gate, more than 40 km away in Old Delhi.