A 30-year-old married woman was allegedly abducted and gang-raped inside a moving sleeper bus in north-west Delhi’s Nangloi on Tuesday night, reigniting concerns over the safety of women in the national capital, which has been ranked as India’s most unsafe metro for women.
According to the latest National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data, Delhi recorded the highest number of crimes against women among the country’s 19 metros in 2024.
AAP on Thursday slammed the “double-engine” government — referring to the BJP-led Centre and the BJP-led Delhi government — over the incident, calling it a repeat of the Nirbhaya incident and alleging total collapse of safety for women in the national capital.
Police sources on Thursday said the accused driver Umesh and conductor Ramendra of the bus in Tuesday’s incident were arrested and the Bihar-registered vehicle used in the crime was impounded. The conductor of the bus allegedly pulled the victim inside the vehicle and sexually assaulted her.
“The woman is married and has three children. After her medical examination, an FIR was registered and the accused were arrested,” said a police officer.
The victim, a resident of a slum cluster in Pitampura, is employed at a nearby factory in Mangolpuri and was walking back home after work.
According to the woman’s complaint, she was walking when a sleeper bus stopped near the bus stand. She told the police that when she asked the conductor about the time, he pulled her inside the bus.
The woman alleged that two men sexually assaulted her inside the moving bus while it travelled for several kilometres towards Nangloi. The police said the bus eventually stopped near Nangloi Metro station, where the woman was abandoned by
the accused.
The victim later called the police and informed them about the incident. She was taken to a nearby hospital for medical examination and an FIR under charges of gang rape and relevant sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) was registered. Forensic experts were called to collect evidence from the bus.
Former deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia, in a post on X, said: “Another Nirbhaya incident in Delhi! Girls are not safe in schools, not safe
in buses!”
In a post on social media, Delhi AAP chief Saurabh Bharadwaj said: “Big Shame — Nirbhaya repeated. A 30-yr-old woman was picked up in the bus at night on the pretext of asking for time. Then she was raped by multiple people in the moving bus for around two hours...”
He said the incident echoed the 2012 Delhi bus gang-rape case in which a 23-year-old paramedic student, later referred to as Nirbhaya, was brutally assaulted by six men inside a moving bus in south Delhi on the night of December 16-17. She was subsequently thrown onto the road. She later died because of her injuries in a Singapore hospital.
According to the NCRB’s latest data, Delhi maintained its top spot among 19 metropolitan cities for crimes against women while also ranking the highest in several other crime categories, including rape, kidnapping and dowry deaths.
Data shows that 13,396 cases of crimes against women were registered in Delhi in 2024 — the highest among 19 major cities. The figure was almost the same as in 2023, when the capital saw 13,439 cases of crime against women.
A total of 1,058 rape cases were reported in 2024, marking the highest among the 19 metropolitan cities again. Data shows that Delhi accounted for more than a quarter of all rape cases registered across the cities.