Indian police arrest man who sexually assaulted over 500 minor girls in 10 years

Police in India Monday claimed to have arrested a 38-year-old paedophile who has sexually assaulted over 500 minor girls in the past decade.

"The suspect, identified as Sunil Rastogi, who is a tailor by profession was arrested by Delhi Police after he recently sexually assaulted a minor girl in the national capital," a senior police official, Omvir Bishnoi, told the media.

The suspect, who hailed from the northern state of Uttarakhand, has confessed to sexually abusing over 500 minor girls between the ages of seven and 11 in the past 10 years, another official said.

Rastogi, who used to target school-going girls, had a simple modus-operandi -- he would come from his home state to Delhi and prowl girls' schools in the afternoon. Rastogi would pick those school girls who would stray from their groups and say he was a friend of her father's who was sending clothes to the girls.

The suspect, police said, would then gift a new set of clothes to his victim and then take her to a secluded spot before sexually assaulting them, and sometimes even raping them. He would then flee the city and most of the time, the victims' families would not complain to cops.

"After interrogating him, we produced him in a city court in the morning, which has remanded him in judicial custody for 14 days," the police official said, adding that they would now investigate if the suspect had sexually assaulted his two daughters.

India had some years back tightened the country's laws against sexual assaults following the fatal and brutal gangrape of a 23-year-old medical student by six men on a moving bus in Delhi in December 2012. Endit