The gory murder of a 21-year-old woman by her 34-year-old stalker at 9 am in north Delhi’s Burari on Tuesday has left the victim’s sister Neha shaken as despite being on the spot she could not save her from the clutches of the “beast” who stabbed her nearly 26 times with passersby just being mute spectators.
“I froze seeing the horror unfold in front of me. All I could do was to shout for help. But nobody came forward to save her,” victim Karuna Kumar’s sister Neha told The Pioneer.
Meanwhile, locals alleged that after the incident several calls were made to police and ambulance but none came after which a call to the victim’s family members were made.
Some locals later caught Singh and handed him over to police. After coming to know about the incident, Karuna’s brother Manish Kumar said he immediately rushed to the spot and took her to the trauma centre.
“The accused, identified as Surender Singh cold heartedly stabbed my sister several times. There was one more man with him who had dropped him on his bike at labour Chowk and also handed him the weapon (knife),” said Kumar who even claimed to have called police and ambulance but in vain.
“I ran and went to help Karuna. I called on 100 twice, police did not come, then I called the ambulance, no one came. After that I just called an auto-rickshaw and took her to the hospital,” he said.
The victim’s family staged a protest near Sushrut Trauma Centre and blocked traffic for an hour. They said police were not sharing information regarding the case.
Karuna’s uncle Vinay said they seek justice and cooperation from police in the case. “We demand strict punishment to the accused. Two other men were also involved in Karuna’s murder and until police arrest them we will not stop the protest.”
Vinay said Karuna — teacher at Novel Reaches School — used to support her two younger brothers, Manish and Himanshu, who are studying.
“My brother Naresh has a shop in Sant Nagar where he sells bags. he makes around Rs8,000-Rs10,000. After Karuna finished her BA through correspondence and got a job, she had been helping her father. Even though she earned Rs5,000, she would help her brothers,” Vinay said.
Esha Pandey, additional DCP-I (North) came on the spot and pacified the angry relatives.
“Her parents are in a state of shock and have been waiting at the hospital since morning. Her mother has fainted three times. The cops were not telling us when they will hand over the body to us. Now, we have been assured that the body will be handed over to us tomorrow morning after the post-mortem,” said one of the family members.
Manish said, “My sister went through a lot of pain because of him. He used to stalk my sister, harass her but when we took the matter to police, his parents came and apologised to us and promised that Surender would not harass her. After a compromise was reached between our families, he had stopped stalking my sister. But we don’t know what prompted him to suddenly kill my sister so brutally.”