MUMBAI: A 32-year-old pavement dweller died on Saturday almost 36 hours after being brutally sexually assaulted and suffering serious lacerations to her private parts with a sharp object inside a parked tempo at Saki Naka in Andheri, reports V Narayan.
The crime took place early on Friday. The 45-year-old accused, a part-time driver from Uttar Pradesh and also a pavement dweller, was tracked to Kurla late on Friday with the help of CCTV cameras and was booked for murder, rape, unnatural offence and sexual harassment. On Saturday, the accused was produced before an Andheri court and was remanded in police custody till September 21.
“The woman had suffered severe injuries in her perineal area (the area between the thighs) and some of her organs, including intestines, were spilling out when she was brought to the hospital,” said a doctor.

The woman, assaulted in a tempo outside Rashid Compound, Saki Naka, was on ventilator support at Rajawadi Hospital for roughly 28 hours before her death around 11.30am on Saturday.
Chief minister Uddhav Thackeray called an urgent meeting of senior IPS officers and said the case would be tried in a fast-track court. He directed police to file a chargesheet within a month’s time.
“Police have been asked to be more vigilant and take steps to ensure that Mumbai’s image of a safe city is not tarnished,” said a senior police officer.
Around 3.15am on Friday, a security guard at Rashid Compound near Chandivli Studio had called the police control, saying a woman was being assaulted inside a parked tempo. A Saki Naka police team reached the spot within 10 minutes of the call and found the injured woman. The accused had fled by then.

“A police constable and other cops got the tempo’s ignition key from the security guard and drove the victim to the hospital immediately,” said DCP (Zone X) Maheshwar Reddy.
“The motive behind the crime is not yet known and the accused has not revealed the reason. The CCTV footage showed him fleeing but we did not see him carrying any weapon used in the crime. The victim suffered severe injuries and lost her life due to excess bleeding,” said a police officer.
Till late Saturday, it was unclear if police had recovered the sharp object used in the assault. She was brought to the hospital in a serious condition and a five-member team of gynaecologists and surgeons operated on her on Friday. She never regained consciousness to be able to talk to the doctors or police.
Dr Vidya Thakur, medical superintendent of Rajawadi Hospital, said the woman was brought to the hospital in a critical condition. “We don’t know how the injuries were caused or if she was sexually assaulted. Forensic tests and police investigations should reveal that,” she said.
Mumbai police commissioner Hemant Nagrale said a special investigation team, led by ACP Jyotsana Rasam, was formed. “The investigation will be completed in a month. The case will be fast-tracked. Initially, it was suspected more persons may have been involved but the arrest of the accused has cleared that,” said Nagrale.
“There are QR codes placed in the jurisdiction of all police stations and whenever police personnel are deployed on night patrol, they have to scan the code to show they have completed patrolling the locality. As part of the investigation, we will check whether police patrolling was conducted in that locality. But the incident occurred in little time and we have to verify whether the team had patrolled the area before it happened,” he said.
Police said the victim, married and separated twice, did odd jobs for a living. She had two daughters from her first marriage and a son from the second. She did not have good relations with her family, said police. She, however, had briefly met her mother and her neighbours around 7pm on Thursday.
A close relative told TOI: “I have known her since childhood. She had no bad habits. She was upset ever since her second husband left her. Her daughters live with her physically disabled mother and son with her estranged husband. The person who killed her was never seen in the locality by any of us. Her mother is in shock. Her younger sister has visited the hospital and is completing the formalities.”
(With Malathy Iyer & Bhavika Jain)