Source: Hueiyen News Service / Agencies
New Delhi, April 25 2009:
A week after a 5-yr-old was raped and killed, Newsline visits the area-neighbours say accused Manoj Thapa always looked scary; father says he should never have been released after he committed first rape as a teen.
Two days after the arrest of the man who allegedly raped and killed her daughter, Gangmei's room in Mahipalpur is locked.
She moved back to Nagaland on April 20 � three days after her five-year-old daughter Haipuiliu Gangmei was killed.
In the adjacent building, Sher Bahadur Thapa, father Manoj Thapa, the alleged rapist, prepares to move again � to a place where no one knows his son has raped someone.
This is not the first time Thapa is fleeing.
"I lived in a servants' quarters at Moti Bagh earlier and had to move out after my son did the same (rape a girl) there as well.
I couldn't face the people there � they wanted to kill me".
None of Thapas' neighbours in Mahipalpur knew Manoj, 21, had a criminal history: he had been charged with rape once, had an attempt-to-murder case registered against him, as also counts of thefts.
On October 27, 2004, when the Thapas lived in Moti Bagh, Manoj, then 16, allegedly raped a deaf and dumb girl in the wooded area in RK Puram behind Anant Ram Dairy.
The girl lived in a slum tenement there.
Manoj was arrested and put in a juvenile home for three years.
"It appears from his statement that he was beginning to show symptoms of a psychopath and a sexual pervert," then Deputy Commissioner of Police (Southwest) D Pathak had said.
Thapa had already shifted from Moti Bagh to Mahipalpur when Manoj was released � the 19-year-old moved in with the family.
"He did no work and spent most of the time in the room, on terrace, or roaming the streets," neighbours said.
Thapa is a security guard; his wife Nirmala works as household help in Gurgaon.
Neighbours said even before this murder, Manoj's behaviour and "strange way of staring" at people was strange.
"At times, he would look at you and would make you feel that he will come and just smash your head," a neighbour in the same building said.
Now, neighbours who seldom spoke with each other are sharing individual experiences they had with Manoj.
But they still stop short of talking about the rape and murder.
On April 17, Manoj took Haipuiliu Gangmei, 5, to the terrace where he allegedly raped her, he then killed her and finally dumped the body in an empty water tank on the roof.
"He came down and asked me for money to visit his sister's house," his father Thapa said.
"I gave him Rs 30 but I had no idea what he had done".
The neighbours then found the five-year-old's body in the water tank.