Odisha researcher gangrape: How cop in guise of social worker, footage of ‘700 CCTVs’ led to 3 arrests

A shopkeeper, a beggar and an autorickshaw driver have been charged with the 10 October gangrape of the Odisha researcher, who had been living on the streets of Delhi.

Representative image of Sarai Kale Khan, Delhi | Credit: Krishan Murari | ThePrint

New Delhi: She was bleeding in a red kurta at Delhi’s Sarai Kale Khan on 11 October when a passerby, noticing her distress, made a PCR call. The police took her to the AIIMS trauma centre.

The woman, originally from Odisha, told doctors at AIIMS about being raped but could not provide details about the perpetrators, or the time and area of the incident, due to her mental condition. She was also deemed unfit for a statement to the police.

The South East district police began a probe with hardly any leads. An FIR was lodged under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita sections for gangrape at the Sunlight Colony police station, and ten police teams were formed.

After investigating for over 20 days and analysing more than 700 CCTV cameras, the police arrested three suspects over the last week.

The woman has experience of working in the social sector. She was a research fellow at Kalinga Network for People Living with HIV/AIDS, an NGO, and a counsellor at the One Stop Centre for women affected by violence in Puri.

The police probe revealed that the woman travelled to Delhi on 9 May this year without informing her parents. On 9 June, a missing report was filed at the Kumbharapada police station in Puri. After she reached Delhi, she started living with an acquaintance.

The woman, who has a Master’s in Social Work from Bhubaneswar’s Utkal University of Culture, told the acquaintance she had secured a job in a bank. According to the police, she subsequently began exhibiting “abnormal behaviour”. The acquaintance reported this to the Kishangarh police station staff, who contacted the woman’s family in Odisha.

However, the woman refused to return to Odisha. She also moved out of the acquaintance’s house. With all contacts with the family severed, she has been living at bus stops, railway stations, and foot over bridges since then.

The investigation

At the start of the probe, the police teams focused on gaining the woman’s trust. With special permission from the management of the AIIMS trauma centre, a woman officer started talking with her under the cover of a social worker. An Odia woman was assigned as her nurse. They tried to build trust with the woman so she would open up to them.

“The woman officer was able to gain minimal yet very crucial information from the victim, such as the involvement of an unidentified autorickshaw driver among three persons, one of them physically disabled. However, the victim was unable to reveal other crucial details regarding the time and place of the incident due to her mental health and trauma from the incident,” DCP (South East) Ravi Kumar Singh said.

The police teams then devised a plan to identify the site of the incident. They identified over 700 privately and government-operated CCTV cameras on major and minor roads, starting from where the police rescued the woman—Sarai Kale Khan—to the Old Delhi railway station. These included cameras at the Red Fort police post, the DCP office in Daryaganj, Mahatma Gandhi Marg, Rajghat-Shantivan, Rajghat depot bypass, ITO Chowk, New Delhi railway station, Mathura road, PWD headquarters, ITO building, Laxmi Nagar police station, DTC headquarters, Indraprastha depot, and petrol and CNG pumps between ITO, among others.

The first breakthrough came when the police found CCTV footage showing the woman exiting the Old Delhi railway station waiting hall at 10.14 am on 10 October. From the footage, the police identified over 150 autorickshaws and analysed the conduct of the drivers and others.

Then, the autorickshaw used during the commission of the crime and its driver, Prabhu Mahto, were identified. The police arrested Mahto on 30 October and the other two accused, Pramod Babu and Mohammad Shamsul, on 2 November and 4 November, respectively.

“During interrogation, Pramod Babu, an alcoholic, revealed that after he closed his shop and started drinking, he noticed the woman. After a while, Mohammad Shamsul, a beggar and alcoholic who is also physically disabled, arrived at the spot. The two men dragged her into an isolated area and sexually assaulted her,” the DCP said.

“The autorickshaw driver, Prabhu Mahto, who was a witness to the incident, forced the victim into the auto and sexually assaulted her as well. They then dumped her near Sarai Kale Khan and fled,” the DCP added.

(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)