Child rape: Second accused in four days' police custody

New Delhi, April 23 (IANS) A Delhi court Tuesday sent Pradeep, the second accused in a five-year-old girl's rape and torture case, to four days of police custody.

Additional Sessions Judge Sanjay Garg also issued a production warrant against prime accused Manoj Kumar for Wednesday after police said they needed to confront him with co-accused Pradeep.

Police told the court that both Manoj and Pradeep had raped the minor. Manoj, from whose rented room the girl was rescued two days after she went missing April 15, however, blamed Pradeep for the brutal attack on the child.

Pradeep, 19, was sent to police custody till April 27 after investigators told the court that he had to be interrogated to unearth the sequence of events.

He was arrested Monday from Bihar's Lakhisarai district where he was hiding at his maternal uncle's house and brought here on transit remand.

The prosecution while seeking custody of Pradeep said they had to recover the mobile phones used by them and question him on new facts that might emerge during the probe.

Additional Sessions Judge Garg is the presiding officer of the special court under Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act. Pradeep was presented before him.

Manoj said he lured the girl into his room by offering her chocolate, but blamed Pradeep for the rape.

Manoj was arrested Saturday from his in-laws' house in Bihar's Muzaffarpur district.

He was sent to judicial custody till May 4 Sunday, following his two-day interrogation by police.

The girl was abducted and kept hostage for two days without food and water in the room in which the attackers lived on the ground floor of a building in east Delhi's Gandhi Nagar. The girl's family stays in the same building, police said.

The girl was rescued when members of her family heard her screams April 17.