Teacher who raped 2 underage girls and eloped with another pupil nabbed in Solan
From Jammu and Kashmir to Patna to Kathmandu, Dhaval Trivedi had lived in gurdwaras and taken up teaching jobs after eloping with a teenaged pupil
Assuming different identities, travelling to various cities, even abroad to Nepal, he had been on the run for two years, but fate finally caught up with Dhaval Trivedi. The 50-year old English teacher from Gujarat, who had been imprisoned for sexually molesting and abducting two underage students, had jumped parole and eloped with another 18-year-old pupil.
He was arrested in Solan by Delhi police on Tuesday.
The teacher had earlier been awarded life imprisonment after being arrested in Punjab in 2014 for sexually assaulting, abducting and eloping with two underage girls he taught.
Out on parole, he was running a coaching centre when he eloped with another teenaged pupil from Chotila in Gujarat’s Rajkot district in 2018 .
Even as the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) announced a cash prize of ₹5 lakh to find him after it took over the case filed at a local police station (in Chotila) by the girl’s parents, the couple could not be traced.
Trivedi changed his name to Satnam Singh alias Mukhtiyar Singh and the couple moved from one gurdwara to another in various cities. They travelled to at least 25 places, including Jammu and Kashmir, Delhi, Patna, Haridwar and Kathmandu where he found teaching jobs to survive.
Both also attempted to flee to Canada as preachers of Sikhism, but failed to furnish the relevant documents.
Things started unravelling for Trivedi after the girl, who had given birth in the interim, returned home with her 11-month-old child after an altercation with him. Both were then living in Haridwar in Uttarakhand.
CBI had in the meantime issued an advisory to all states and also reached out to Nepal and Bhutan police through Interpol, issuing blue corner notices (to have someone’s identity verified, obtain particulars of a person’s criminal record, locate someone who is missing or is an identified or unidentified international criminal whose extradition can be requested).
Left on his own, Trivedi had come to Solan, where he was arrested by Delhi police after they traced him through technical surveillance.