Woman crying out for help triggers late-night car chase in the heart of Delhi

The absence of any missing or kidnapping complaint has led police to believe that it could be a case of “dispute between known people”.

A call to the police control room (PCR) about a woman in a car crying out for help in the early hours of Monday led to multiple PCR vans undertaking a high-speed car chase on the streets of south Delhi. However, the car that the officers were chasing managed to give them the slip, and by Monday evening, the police were yet to gather any concrete clues about the case.

Police said that the dramatic events unfolded in South Extension Part 1 at around 12.35am. (Representative Image)

The absence of any complaint of any woman missing or kidnapped in such circumstances has led the police to believe that it could be a case of “dispute between known people”.

Police said that the dramatic events unfolded in South Extension Part 1 at around 12.35am, when a group of NEET aspirants spotted a grey Hyundai i20 car with two men and two women. Officers, quoting the students, said that one man was behind the wheel, and a woman was seated next to him on the front seat. The backseat was occupied by another man and woman.

The DCP said that the students unsuccessfully tried to stop the car, which then sped away towards INA. She said they managed to note down a Delhi registration number, which they later shared with police at around 1.15am.

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“We did not find records of any car by this number,” said the DCP.

Police said a PCR car in the area managed to note down the number of a similar car — a Haryana registration number — and sent out an alert on the police radio scanner. Receiving the alert, three PCR vans in the area spotted a car with a similar description and began a high-speed chase from INA towards Safdarjung at around 1am. However, the car managed to give police the slip by taking the Barapullah flyover, a senior officer aware of the case, declining to be named, said.

Meanwhile, officers at the Kotla Mubarakpur police station checked CCTV footage around the spot from where the students first spotted the car, and the footage seemed to confirm what the students had reported.

“A camera showed a car, possibly a Maruti Celerio or a Hyundai i10, at the spot around 12.35am. Its front door was open and it appeared that a woman was calling out for help,” said a second police officer. The CCTV, however, had failed to capture the car’s number plate.

The Haryana registration number that the first PCR car shared was a dead-end — police said the number was registered to a two-wheeler. Thus, police focused their attention to CCTVs along the route which the car was suspected to have taken. “Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) cameras which issue automatic speeding challans are present on the Barapullah flyover at Sewa Nagar and at the DND Flyover. We expected the car to have passed these camera locations at a high-speed between 12.45am and 1.30am,” said DCP Chowdhary.

However, the ANPR cameras did not capture the car. The police also alerted their counterparts in Noida, where the car was suspected to be driven to, but the tip-off went fruitless.

To be sure, police suspect that the car at South Extension and the car that the PCR vans chased are the same, but there is no concrete evidence. “We suspect that the students who first reported the matter to us were not able to note down the number correctly. That is why there is the discrepancy in the registration numbers,” said an investigator, who is not authorised to speak to the media.

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By Monday evening, police concluded that the events were likely a dispute between known people.

The investigator quoted above said, “We have reached out to hostels and paying guest accommodations in the area to know if any woman has gone missing, but for now it looks like that it was a personal issue rather than a case of kidnapping.”

Chowdhary, meanwhile, said, “Efforts are still on to verify and trace the unknown (woman)… It seems that the possibility of it being a case of kidnapping is unlikely. It could probably be a matter of some dispute between known persons.”