11 years of Nirbhaya case: Cop narrates how Delhi Police nabbed rapists
11 years after the shocking Nirbhaya rape case, IPS Chhaya Sharma talked about how the Delhi Police tracked down and caught the perpetrators.
The Nirbhaya rape case left the entire country shocked at the horrific nature of the crime.
A 23-year-old physiotherapy intern was brutally gangraped while her male friend was beaten by the attackers inside a moving bus in South Delhi. The two were dumped on the side of a highway in Munirka without their clothes and personal belongings.
11 years after the horrific crime, IPS officer Chhaya Sharma, who was in charge of the case, recalled how the Delhi Police ended up tracking down the six perpetrators.
How did Delhi Police crack down on Nirbhaya rape case perpetrators
IPS Chhaya Sharma received a call in the middle of the night about two people, stripped off their clothes, lying on the side of the road deeply injured. The first call of action just an hour after the phone call was to locate the bus.
She said, “People assume the scene of the crime was the place where Nirbhaya's body was dumped, but the real scene of the crime was the moving bus, so the first thing we did was to track it down.”
After tracking through CCTV cameras, the bus was found near the residence of the driver Ram Singh, who was the first person arrested in the case. Two more men were arrested for being missing the night of the crime, and the police connected the dots based on their locations.
The fourth rapist, Mukesh, was arrested after sketches of him were circulated based on the description given by Nirbhaya's friend. Mukesh had only decided to surrender when the police had told him that they will tell his mother about his crimes.
The fifth accused was Lokesh, driver Ram Singh's brother. He had fled to his mother's home in Rajasthan, but was arrested in December 18 by a special STF team sent there, the IPS officer said. The last accused in the case, and the most tricky to catch, was the juvenile perpetrator Mohammed Afroz.
Since only Ram Singh knew the then juvenile accomplice personally, he was taken on rounds with the police to identify him. Eventually, Afroz was arrested from the Anand Vihar bus terminal in Delhi, likely trying to flee the city.
“To get the conviction, we not only made a list of all her external and internal injuries, but also mentioned the 13 bite marks on her body, showing the animalistic nature of the crime,” IPS Chhaya Sharma told ANI.
The heinous nature of the crime and the gory details of the torture the victim was subjected to compelled the court to give the death penalty to five out of the six convicted in the rape case.
