A limo driver stewing at Rikers Island on a rape charge tried to hire a hit man to kill the victim - using a picture of her from an evidence file, sources said.
Rajeev Kumar's scheme to silence his accuser was blown open in a sting operation, sources say, and now he's facing a conspiracy rap.
Kumar, 30, raped the grad student in the back seat of his limo after offering to give her a lift home from a Manhattan nightclub, sources say.
He wasn't caught until a decade later, when he was arrested in an arson case and his DNA matched the evidence in the long-cold sex assault case.
"He thought he had gotten away with the rape all these years," a law enforcement source said. "Then he was caught and he just couldn't accept it."
Kumar told fellow Rikers inmates he would pay for someone to "get rid of his problem," a Correction Department source said.
Word of his offer made it to the Manhattan district attorney's office, which worked with the NYPD to set up an undercover operation.
A cop posing as a hit man met with Kumar, who said he would pay $15,000 for the rubout, sources said.
He said he didn't know where the rape victim lived but he knew what school she graduated from and had a photo - which alarmed investigators.
Sources said the photo was in an evidence file turned over to defense lawyer Nelson Schmukler.
Schmukler would not say if he gave his client the photo - or why - and declined to comment on the case.
Kumar's ex-wife said she didn't believe the rape or murder-for-hire charge.
"Fifteen grand? He doesn't have 15 dollars," said Harpreet Saini, 24, who has a 3-year-old daughter with Kumar.
"He blew all his money on drink and gambling. It's all lies."
But DNA doesn't lie, and authorities say they have physical evidence that ties Kumar to the rape.
The victim had just left S.O.B.'s in August 2000 when Kumar said he would drive her home. Court papers said the woman was raped in the back seat and dumped.
The woman said she could not identify her assailant and the DNA in her rape kit did not match anything in the criminal database - until July 2009 when an FDNY fire marshal arrested Kumar in an insurance scam.
He admitted he set fire to his family's 2008 Lincoln Navigator to collect a payout and make good on a $4,000 debt to a friend, court records said.
He pleaded guilty to arson in March and got five years' probation. He also gave a DNA sample to marshals, who matched it to the 2000 rape.
Kumar denied the sex assault charge.
"That's not true. ... Never happened anything with me like that in my life," he told police, court records show. "I don't know anything about this."
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