KATHMANDU, MAY 3
Lalitpur District Court has acquitted former deputy superintendent of police Rajkumar Khiuju, who was accused of raping a girl multiple times over a period of five months at several places, including his own duty station at Chapagaun Police Circle, Lalitpur.
Officials of the court told THT that Khiuju was declared not guilty by a single bench of Judge Dev Kumar Giri a few days ago. The full text of the verdict is yet to come, but he has walked out of judicial custody.
Earlier, the court had sent Khiuju to judicial custody after a 21-year-old girl had filed an FIR on February 5 last year with Metropolitan Police Range, Jawalakhel, accusing him of 'misusing his power and raping her multiple times and threatening her life.' Following the FIR, Khiuju was at large. Police had to form a special task force to arrest him several days after the FIR was filed.
A permanent resident of Thula Durlung of Mahankal Rural Municipality in Lalitpur, the girl and her aide, talking to THT, had earlier said that Khiuju, on the pretext of providing her a police report, had raped her the first time inside the police station on 13 February 2019. According to the girl, after raping her, Khiuju had escorted her to her rented room in the police van.
Following the incident on February 13, Khiuju then started forcing his way into her rented room for the next five months and repeatedly raped her. He had also threatened to kill her parents back in the village if she told about the incident to anyone.
According to the FIR file by the girl, the last time she was raped was in June-end 2019 in her rented room at Satdobato.
THT tried to talk to the girl and her aide for their comment on the decision, but they could not be contacted.
A version of this article appears in the print on May 4, 2021, of The Himalayan Times.
