Bhubaneswar: June 30: The Khandagiri police today arrested an autorickshaw driver who had attempted to outrage the modesty of a woman passenger near Khandagiri hill. Local residents handed over the driver to the police. The 22-year -old victim from Chhatiabata in Jajpur district is a staff nurse at Saranakula public health centre in Nayagarh. She was on her way to Bhubaneswar to attend an interview at Capital Hospital today when the auto-rickshaw driver looted her belongings and tried to outrage her modesty.

According to the girl’s brother, she reached Baramunda bus stand today at around 11 am. She then asked the autorickshaw driver to take her to Capital Hospital. The driver, identified as Jitendra Senapati (33), took a U-turn in front of Rajadhani College towards Khandagiri. When she asked him why he was taking that route, he said that that he had to drop the other passenger, also a woman, at Khandagiri square.

After dropping the other passenger, the driver took the vehicle towards the Khandagri hills instead of coming to the city. He robbed the woman off her gold necklace, earring, mobile phone and Rs 1,500 and tried to outrage her modesty.

The cries of the woman attracted the local youths who chased Senapati and caught him. Later the police arrived at the spot and arrested him.

The girl then lodged a complaint against the driver.

Khandagiri police handed over the accused to Mahila police that would forward him to the court tomorrow.

Police seized the auto-rickshaw from the spot. They also seized the girl’s mobile phone from the driver. However they are yet to seize the ornaments and the cash of the nurse.

Today’s incident reminded the citizens of the June 10 gang rape of a college girl in a moving car. The eighteen year old girl was raped by two persons who knew her earlier and in the pretext of giving her a lift to her sister’s house in Phulanakhara, they outraged her modesty and captured the crime in their mobile phones. Police later arrested these two men and sent them to jail.

In another incident, a man cheated Rs 50,000 from a woman identified as Jhunu Pradhan from Ketakipatna area in Puri district, posing himself as a relative of the woman. According to Pradhan, her daughter Sonia Pradhan had met with an accident recently and had a brain hemorrhage. She was admitted to a private hospital in the city. A youth who identified himself as a relative of Pradhan, told her to shift the patient to another hospital. Accordingly she had to pay the hospital bill of Rs 55,000 before taking her daughter from the hospital. But after sometime of handing Rs 50,000 to that person, she found him missing. After searching the man for sometime, she called her relatives to identify the man who had said his name ‘Papu’.

However she had not approached the police till late evening.