The national capital seems to be finding it difficult to shed the image of being India's 'rape capital', with over 330 rape and molestation cases reported in the first four months of this year.

According to official figures, 121 cases of rape were registered so far this year while approximately 210 incidents of molestation were reported from various parts of the city.

Eight minors were among the 14 women raped in the city this month, which prompted the Parliamentary Committee on Women and Child Development to summon Delhi Police Commissioner Y S Dadwal and ask him to submit a report on cases of crime against women in the recent past and the action taken by the police.

"We have arrested the alleged rapists in over 90 per cent of the cases. In majority of the cases, persons well known to the victims were behind the crime," a senior police official said.

In 98.28 per cent of the 581 rape cases registered last year, the accused were known to the victims and had been interacting with the victims in the normal course of life.

While 658 rape cases were reported in 2005, the figure fell to 49 the next year. The number of molestation cases were 762 and 713 for 2005 and 2006 respectively, while last year, 835 such incidents were reported.

The Delhi police attribute the incidents of rape to a number of sociological factors, including 'mushrooming of JJ clusters and sub-human living conditions'. An analysis of rape cases in 2007 by the Delhi police said that 68 per cent of the rape accused were illiterate while 24 per cent had only studied up to Standard 10. Approximately 80 per cent of the accused belong to the poor strata.

"Of all the cases last year, 64 per cent were committed in houses and five per cent in slums," the Delhi Police Annual Report for 2007 said.

"Poor civic amenities, sub-human living conditions, inadequate housing facilities and mushrooming of JJ clusters are few of the sociological factors contributing to the increased tendencies in general and incidents of rape in particular," the report said.

"In JJ clusters, the entire family lives in a small area devoid of any privacy, which affected family taboos and moral barriers," it said.

A two-and-half year-old girl was the youngest rape victim this month, while two minors were sexually assaulted in a moving car, including one in which a traffic police constable was arrested along with his property-dealer friend.
The red-faced Delhi police immediately dismissed Sanjeev Rana, the constable who also tried to allegedly bribe the victim's family to drop the case, from the service.

In another shocking incident, a rape victim was publicly thrashed by family members and neighbours of the accused. A mentally-challenged girl, who is deaf and dumb, was allegedly raped by a bus driver.

A teenaged boy, who was arrested for allegedly raping a minor girl, escaped from police custody in north-west Delhi this month.

In other cases, a 40-year old woman was allegedly gangraped on April 16 by four men, including her husband's friend, in a moving car. A day later, unidentified men barged into a house in north Delhi, raped a 26-year-old woman and fled with valuables.