A tailor has been arrested in Delhi for allegedly sexually assaulting minor girls
"I don't know what would come over me," said 38-year-old Sunil Rastogi, a short and wiry tailor arrested for sexually assaulting three little girls. The police say the father of five has confessed to attacking hundreds of girls over a period of 12 years.
Rastogi was arrested on Saturday in the same red striped shirt that he apparently wore while hunting for his victims in Delhi. Paraded before the media on Sunday, he mumbled his response to questions, his face almost entirely obscured by a monkey cap.
"I used to take them away...They were 10-11 years old... I did it in Delhi and Ghaziabad," he said in a monotone, held by policemen.
The police are baffled that Rastogi, who travelled between Uttar Pradesh and Delhi, escaped arrest all this time despite being a repeat offender.
The alleged paedophile lured girls to deserted places after telling them their parents need them to deliver stuff like clothes from him.
His luck ran out after two girls, 9 and 10, told their families last week that a man took them to a half-constructed building, tried to attack them and ran away when they screamed. A similar case had emerged in December.
The police suspected that the same man was involved. CCTV footage from various spots revealed Rastogi to the police.
During his interrogation came the stunning discovery that the police had a serial rapist in their custody. He was even jailed in 2006 for six months in Uttarakhand's Rudrapur, where he stays.
Rastogi has three daughters and two sons. The police are trying to find out whether the daughters were assaulted.
In 2004, he was beaten and hounded out of his home in east Delhi after he allegedly attacked a neighbour's daughter.
Rastogi is from Rampur in Uttar Pradesh and came to Delhi in 1990 with his family.