TV show Crime Patrol possibly inspired Agra man to burn his Dalit teen cousin dead

People take part in a candlelight march demanding justice for Sanjali Chanakya | PTI photo

Police say Sanjali Chanakya’s cousin Yogesh, who committed suicide hours after her murder, had planned the crime down to the last detail.

New Delhi: In a curious turn of events, the police have claimed that 15-year-old Sanjali Chanakya, who died in Delhi’s Safdarjung Hospital last Thursday, was set on fire by her own 25-year-old paternal cousin Yogesh Singh, who committed suicide hours after her death.

At a press conference Tuesday, Agra SP Amit Pathak said Yogesh had been planning the murder for months, and seemingly took inspiration from the television show Crime Patrol, which “he had a habit of watching”.

“He had a disposition towards arson as a crime, and had even set a certificate on fire in anger before. He was obsessed with the murder for months — he planned it meticulously, to the very last detail,” Pathak said.

The police’s investigation has put paid to the caste colour the case had taken because the murdered girl was a Dalit.

Accomplices

Sanjali was doused in petrol and set alight by what first appeared to be two unidentified men who arrived on a red motorcycle last Tuesday, while she was walking home from the Asharfi Devi Chidda Singh Inter-College in the Naumeel village of Agra district, which is located roughly five kilometres from her home in Lalau.

However, after the police took two men into custody Monday — Vijay, the son of Yogesh’s maternal uncle, and Akash, the brother-in-law of Vijay’s brother — it was revealed that there were actually three men and two motorcycles present at the crime scene.

Vijay drove the first motorcycle, behind whom sat Yogesh with the petrol and lighter. Akash followed them on a second bike.

“Yogesh roped in family to commit the crime to ensure their silence. He paid them Rs 15,000 rupees,” Pathak revealed.

Motive

From a series of WhatsApp chats, phone calls, a handwritten letter, as well as an older picture of Sanjali walking home from school in the exact location of the murder found on Yogesh’s phone, the police has been able to ascertain that Yogesh had been bothering Sanjali for many months prior to the crime.

“He wanted her to pursue modelling, and was very angered when she refused,” Pathak said. In fact, Yogesh’s incessant attempts to convince Sanjali resulted in him being barred from entering her home — a fact that neither of the families revealed when questioned by journalists.

Sanjali’s father Harendra Singh had told ThePrint Friday that his daughter had big dreams of becoming an IPS officer, and was excelling in school.

Further, Sanjali’s mother Anita Chanakya had stressed that there was no enmity between the two families, and “the things people were saying about the nature of Yogesh and Sanjali’s relationship are untrue”.

Clues

It appears that Sanjali was also not the only member of his family that Yogesh attacked.

Sanjali’s father also told ThePrint Friday that he had been struck on the back of the head a few months ago by two unidentified assailants on a motorcycle when he was returning from work at 8:30 pm.

“There was considerable swelling for four days, but I assumed they were just miscreants or petty thieves up to no good,” he had said. “I didn’t think this could happen to my children tomorrow.” No case was registered at the time.

Pathak told the press that Yogesh was also responsible for the attack on Sanjali’s father, “because he wanted to use it as an opportunity to protect the family and regain entry into their home”.

It had earlier also been reported that Yogesh’s phone had been switched off from 9 am to 4:15 pm on the day of the crime, which Pathak had said was “very unusual” as “we now know that he was in constant touch with the girl”.

His suicide, so soon after Sanjali’s death, made the police suspicions that Yogesh was somehow involved.

The plan

Pathak revealed that Yogesh did not use his own motorcycle, but borrowed one from Agra, over 10 kilometres away from Lalau.

Further, when the police — who created a WhatsApp group of over 40 officers from various departments to investigate the crime — tried to track the licence plate number, they learnt that it had been changed.

Not only that, Pathak said “the three men changed their positions on the bike when they went to collect petrol. They changed their clothes, even their shoes, and wore masks to cover their faces”.

Yogesh had bought shoes worth Rs 1,200 and did not want to get rid of them after the murder, so he exchanged them with the person sent to conduct a recce of the spot.

The stretch of National Highway 39 where Sanjali was burned was surveyed three times before Tuesday. “A full escape plan was devised, they had figured out a meeting place also,” Pathak said.

Yogesh even wore gloves as he doused Sanjali with petrol, so as to not leave his fingerprints on the canister. The lighter — a significant clue for the police — was not a conventional one, as it belonged to a higher-end domestic burner.

Yogesh’s home had just procured one.

The police took a step closer to cracking the case when they accessed CCTV footage from the petrol pump — not, however, from the ones facing the road or even the cars.

“As this is a rural area, the dearth of CCTV cameras made our job difficult. But then when we accessed the camera pointing inside the shop at the petrol pump, the reflection of a glass could show us the bikes and cars getting fuel outside. From there we could map the comings and goings of the motorcycles,” Pathak revealed.

A notebook recovered as evidence from Yogesh’s home also had Sanjali’s name on it where certain pages had been torn out.

“We also found a copy of a blank certificate that Sanjali had been gifted along with the cycle that she won in a competition. It’s not natural for him to have had that,” Pathak said.

Sanjali’s elder sister Anjali had told ThePrint that she had won that bicycle as an award as the first prize in an inter-school general knowledge competition.

Yogesh had no prior criminal record.

Caste angle

Political parties and groups like the Bhim Army had tried to make this a caste-based issue, since Sanjali belonged to a Dalit family. The Bhim Army carried out an Agra Bandh Tuesday, and four days before that, its chief Chandrashekhar Azad put forth a challenge that “if these miscreants aren’t caught, then I’ll shut the whole country down like what happened on April 2nd”.

A few hours later, he had arrived with a group of at least 30 Bhim Army members at the family’s doorstep.

“I have faith that they will be caught, but if they’re not, then the entire Bhim Army is ready to take to the streets and protest. If someone is being protected, then we won’t stand by that,” Azad had told the family, neighbours and the press.

More tweets by Azad had claimed that the media and the government weren’t paying attention to this crime because a member of the Dalit community was the victim.

The Bhim Army also held candlelight marches demanding the death sentence for Sanjali’s killers across states including Chattisgarh, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand, and Uttar Pradesh.

Ram Shankar Katheria, chairman of the National Commission for Scheduled Castes and the Lok Sabha MP from Agra, also announced Rs 10 lakh compensation for the victim’s family.

Meanwhile, at least 800 students had taken part in a march to the district collector’s office in Panchkuian, Agra, Saturday with a single demand — ‘Justice for Sanjali’. They said the protest wasn’t about caste or community, but about women’s safety and getting justice for the murdered Sanjali.