india

Updated: Feb 16, 2019 07:16 IST

A trainer for special children was arrested on Friday on the charge of raping a 24-year-old woman with neurodevelopment disorder [autism], police said.

Police arrested the man, identified as Khushal Singh, after matching his DNA sample with the foetus, which was preserved after the victim’s pregnancy was aborted because of medical complications.

The woman was 19 weeks’ pregnant when her parents reported the incident to the Lucknow police on November 26 last year, almost five months after she was allegedly raped, police said.

Khushal Singh, along with his wife, runs Samarpan Day Care Foundation, in Madiyaon, Lucknow. Previously, the couple worked at different training centres for special children, the police said.

Aliganj circle officer Deepak Kumar Singh, who was supervising the case, said the woman was kept in a special children’s centre in Dehradun for 11 years as she was unable to speak and identify anyone because of her neuro-development disorder.

He said the woman’s parents, who worked in Lucknow, brought her to the city during the summer vacation. The officer said the woman’s parents kept her in the day care centre run by Khushal Singh for 10 days.

Singh said the woman, who has speech disability, could not tell her parents about the incident.

He said the police first zeroed in on three suspects at the daycare centre and collected blood samples to match it with the DNA sample of the foetus.

“DNA sampling was done in two months’ time and we found that it matched with that of Khushal Singh.

He confessed to the crime when he was questioned,” the police officer said.

“The accused allegedly raped the woman when his wife was not present at the daycare centre,” the circle officer said.