A 24-year-old man who allegedly raped a woman near the Darwin bus exchange on Thursday afternoon was on the loose for hours without the public being informed, before he was finally apprehended by police at Casuarina last evening, NT Police said.

Police received a report that a woman had been sexually assaulted “in the vicinity” of the Darwin bus exchange at around 2:20pm Thursday, police said in a statement.

While a crime scene was established at the scene, police did not notify the public of the incident and the alleged offender evaded police for hours.

Police said at 6pm, the 24-year-old who they believe raped the woman, was arrested “in Casuarina and remains in custody”.

Police did not explain why they did not notify the public of the incident until Friday afternoon or the extent of the risk the man posed to the community for the hours he was at large.

They also did not explain why they believed he was responsible for the crime or how exactly he was located.

The man was charged with one count of sexual intercourse without consent and was remanded to appear in Darwin Local Court on October 2.

The NT Police executive and media unit came under intense criticism earlier this month when they failed to publicly report a violent sexual assault on a worker at Casuarina Square who had been pushed into a toilet cubicle by a man who told her he was going to strangle and rape her.

She later escaped but police told state media they would no longer be reporting violent sexual assaults to the public.

However, Assistant Police Commissioner Travis Wurst later backflipped on the comments and said the failure to report the Casuarina incident was due to an “oversight”. He added that the “public deserves to know” about serious sex assaults in the community and that police would report them as they occurred while protecting the victims.

It was not explained how the alleged rape in a public place in the CBD on Thursday would not be publicly reported and why the suspect was allowed to roam the community for nearly four hours.

An NT Independent review of crime stats spanning 22 months to October 2021 found that less than six per cent of alleged sexual assaults were publicly reported by police, that included a three month span where no sex crimes were made public at all.