TNN

Panaji, Feb 18: Thirteen months after a 32-year-old British woman complained that she was raped near the capital city, the Panaji police on Tuesday claimed to have cracked the case with the arrest of a daily wage worker from the forest department.

On January 11, 2008, the woman was returning from a show at Kala Academy, Panaji, when not able to get a taxi to the Panaji bus stand, she had accepted a lift from an unidentified motorcycle rider.

However, instead of taking her to the bus stand, the rider took her to the spring at Merces where he assaulted and raped her.

Arresting 26-year-old Lawrence Dias from Merces, DySP Sammy Tavares said, "He has confessed to his crime. We are trying to contact the victim and will soon move an application to the magistrate for conducting an identification parade." Sources said that the victim is at the moment in Goa.

Dias who is from a lower middle class family, is working for the animal rescue wing of the forest department at Campal as a daily wage worker and has been remanded to 14 days police custody.

"On information provided by the victim, we prepared a sketch of the accused and distributed it to all police stations. Recently, we received information, based on which we arrested the accused," said investigating officer PI Francis Korte. Sources said that following the incident, an award of Rs 20,000 had been announced to anyone providing information.

They added that the medical examination of the victim shortly after the incident had shown "recent forcible, sexual intercourse".