3 min readNew DelhiUpdated: Apr 23, 2026 06:16 PM IST
Investigation into the rape and murder of the 22-year-old daughter of an Indian Revenue Service (IRS) officer in Southeast Delhi has revealed that the 23-year-old accused, Rahul Meena, first assaulted her with a table lamp and water bottle before raping her while she lay unconscious.
At the time of the incident, the 22-year-old, an IITian preparing for civil services entrance exams, was studying in a room on the fourth floor of their family home. Once she became unconscious due to the assault, Rahul dragged her down the stairs by her hair to the third floor. He then, police sources have said, tried to open a digital locker with her fingerprints. When that did not help, Rahul used a screwdriver to open the safe before stealing Rs 2.5 lakh in cash.
The investigators have found that the victim’s parents were at the gym when the incident took place. The couple had left the keycard in a shoe rack outside the main door so that their domestic help could enter.
Rahul worked at the family home earlier and knew where they kept the key. “Around 6:29 am, Rahul entered a room on the terrace where the victim was studying. She screamed on seeing him, and he tried to gag her. When she resisted, he struck her with a table lamp and water bottle, knocking her unconscious before allegedly raping her,” a source said.
After the assault, he dragged her body downstairs into the house. He changed out of his bloodied pants into a pair from the victim’s brother’s almirah. “CCTV cameras were installed inside the house, but they were not functioning,” the source added.
Rahul stole Rs 2.5 lakh in cash, strangled the victim to death with a phone charging cord, and fled through the front gate with the cash in his backpack and the victim’s iPhone in his pocket. “Pretending to be on a phone call as he exited, he entered Astha Kunj park, dumped the iPhone, and took a car to the Palam railway station, but missed his train. He then boarded an auto-rickshaw to a hotel in Dwarka and checked in after paying Rs 2,500 and providing his Aadhaar card as a document,” the source said. Missing the train proved costly, because he was arrested at this hotel.
