NEW DELHI: Heroic action by the Delhi Police and a cab driver foiled what could have been another Dhaula Kuan-type abduction and molestation of a young woman in a moving vehicle, in the wee hours of Sunday. In an operation code-named ‘Mousetrap’ that lasted an hour, cops located and chased down a Scorpio in which five drunken youths had abducted an employee of a Gurgaon nightclub , and finally rescued the 24-year-old woman at a jungle road near Aya Nagar in south Delhi, around 4.10am. Two of her assailants were nabbed while three managed to get away. The youths had been following the woman, who along with three others had hailed a radio taxi around 2.30am from Gurgaon’s Sahara Mall to return to their residence in Badarpur. At the Ghitorni Metro Station, the youths in their Scorpio forced the cab to stop and tried to pull out the women. The cab driver, Amit Sharma, resisted the assailants. He was beaten up and even offered Rs 1,000 to let the occupants out of his Alto. The accused then dragged the 24-year-old victim, who was sitting on the front seat, into their SUV and drove off. “They took all the four mobile phones from the women so they could not make calls,” said DCP (South) Chhaya Sharma. The men also tried to force another woman into their Scorpio but failed, she said. Sharma, the cab driver whose mobile was not taken, called up the cops at 3.12am. The South district police quickly launched a hunt. The nearest police picket, at Aya Nagar, was informed and a team of four personnel on patrol duty – sub-inspectors Kuldeep Sharma and Bansi Lal, and constables Chander Bhan and Raghubir – set off in a Tata 407 tempo to look for the Scorpio. The target was spotted around 4am near Jaunapur Road and the chase began. Police said the tempo hit the Scorpio several times in an attempt to make it stop but the accused were in no mood to give in. Finally, the police team trapped them at a bottleneck on a jungle road near Aya Nagar and rescued the woman. They managed to catch two of the accused, Kartar Singh and Pramod, while the other three escaped The two have been booked under various sections including abduction, criminal intimidation, causing hurt, outraging the modesty of a woman and robbery, while five teams have been sent to Faridabad and Ballabhgarh to hunt down the others. It all began at Pigeon, a nightclub in Gurgaon’s Sahara Mall where the youths had gathered to celebrate the new Scorpio bought by Kartar Singh, 22, a Manav Rachna university alumnus who runs a play school, Little Pride, in Faridabad. Apart from Singh and Pramod (22), others have been identified as Ramesh Nagar, Deepak and Arun. Cops said the five friends a full bottle of Blender’s Pride whiskey in Faridabad before coming to Gurgaon in search of more liquor. “They first went to DLF mall in Gurgaon but were not allowed into the two pubs there. Then they came to Sahara mall and went to Pigeon,” Chhaya Sharma said. Around 2.30am, the four girls, two residing in Badarpur, were coming out of the mall. Kartar Singh and his friends followed them. “They were apparently interested in one of the girls. Kartar was very aggressive and had asked her to come and dance with him,” said Sharma. The 24 year old girl, who is married, told the men to get lost, said a police officer. The youths also misbehaved with the women at the mall. Two of the women, including the one who was abducted, work in Pigeon and live together in a rented accommodation in Badarpur, south Delhi. Police said the two other were their cousins and had recently come from Etah and Kannauj (in Uttar Pradesh) to visit them. “The women had brought their cousins to show them the malls and their workplace,” said an officer. The girls hired a radio cab, an Alto car DL1R T 5200, from Gurgaon for Badarpur for Rs 400. The drunk youths chased the cab after removing the temporary number plates of their Scorpio. Around 3am, they intercepted the cab near Ghitorni Metro Station and took the car keys from driver Amit Sharma.

