In 12 days, Delhi saw four rapes — from a 17‑year‑old attacked in Astha Kunj Park to a six‑year‑old near Deshbandhu Gupta Road.
One went to a temple to pray. One stepped out to buy a pencil and a notebook. One went to meet a friend. One was six years old. In 12 days, in Delhi, all four were raped, and one of them did not come home alive. Start with the latest. On Monday night, a 17-year-old and a male friend entered Astha Kunj Park near the Kalkaji temple. Three men allegedly approached them claiming to be policemen, accused the pair of “doing wrong,” separated them, and raped the girl in turns. The accused , Asif, Hemant and his brother Mukesh , were arrested early on Tuesday after an hours-long manhunt.
The same Monday, in another part of the city, a six-year-old was raped near Deshbandhu Gupta Road. The accused has been held.
Days earlier, on September 16, a Class 6 student in Sadar Bazar who had left home to buy stationery was tied up and raped inside a shop by its owner. He has since been arrested.
And on September 10, a 17-year-old in Swaroop Nagar went to meet someone she knew. She was gang-raped, stabbed and dumped; her body was recovered on September 13. Four people have been arrested , three of them minors.
What connects the four is not just their ages. It is where they were taken. A temple park after dark. A residential stretch a child should have been able to cross alone. A shopfront on a crowded bazaar lane. A patch of open ground. None of these are remote or lawless corners; they are ordinary Delhi, the kind of spaces the city fills with safety slogans and self-defence camps. The gaps that let these crimes happen were not exotic , poor lighting, thin patrolling, unwatched public spaces, and the plain absence of anyone to call in time.
That absence on the ground is only half the problem. The other half is what the law does once the harm is already done.
All four are being prosecuted under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, which covers every victim under 18. On paper, the law is strict: special courts, in-camera trials, a bar on identifying the victim, and a mandate to complete trial, as far as possible, within a year of cognisance. In practice, the gaps are wide. POCSO courts carry heavy pendency, and the one-year timeline is routinely breached, so “fast-track” justice can still run for years.
The starkest gap sits in the Swaroop Nagar case, where three of the four arrested are juveniles. Under the Juvenile Justice Act, a 16-to-18-year-old can be tried as an adult for a heinous offence only after a Juvenile Justice Board assessment; a child under 16 cannot be, however grave the crime. A juvenile not tried as an adult faces a maximum of three years in a special home , so in a rape-and-murder, the punishment can turn on the age of the accused, not the act.
The numbers frame the pattern. NCRB’s 2023 report logged 1,088 rapes in Delhi, the most of any metropolitan city in India. Its 2024 data placed the capital on top of 19 major metros, with 1,058 rapes and 13,396 total crimes against women. Delhi Police’s January 2026 figures, by contrast, claimed a 5-to-8 per cent fall in crimes against women and a solving rate above 95 per cent. NCRB’s full 2025 figures are not yet out.
Source: https://www.timesnownews.com/delhi/delhi-shame-returns-4-minors-raped-in-12-days-article-156205312