MEERUT The conviction of five accused in the Bulandshahr national highway gangrape case not only delivered long-awaited justice to the victims, but also brought to fore glaring lapses in Bulandshahr police’s initial probe, wherein instead of pursuing the real perpetrators, the local police hurriedly sent innocent men to jail to showcase prompt action, revealed two CBI charge sheets and findings of the Haryana Police.
The crime took place on July 28 night, 2016, when a family travelling on National Highway-91 was abducted, robbed and the mother-daughter duo gang-raped. Public outrage erupted soon after the incident, forcing administrative action. As many as 17 police personnel, including the then SSP, were suspended.
Within 24 hours of the incident, on July 29 night, the Bulandshahr police claimed to have cracked the case by arresting three men – Rais, Naresh, and Bablu. However, there was confusion on August 1, when the DGP and other officials visited the spot and addressed the media, naming three accused- two of whose names differed from those already sent to jail.
The victim’s family questioned the arrests and demanded a fresh identification parade. Police officials later claimed that two of the arrested men, who had initially given their names as Naresh and Bablu, were actually Chavez and Jabar after verification.
The same evening, action was taken against the district police chief, and the accused were officially renamed as Jabar, Chavez, and Rais, with police insisting that the name confusion occurred before the DGP’s press briefing.
{{/usCountry}}The same evening, action was taken against the district police chief, and the accused were officially renamed as Jabar, Chavez, and Rais, with police insisting that the name confusion occurred before the DGP’s press briefing.
{{/usCountry}}Under mounting pressure from the administration, the Bulandshahr police conducted a hurried press conference, declaring the arrested youths as the “monsters” responsible for the heinous crime. Yet, while being produced before the court, the accused broke down before television cameras, crying and repeatedly asserting their innocence, saying, “Sir, we have been framed.”
When the CBI later took over the probe after registering a case on August 12, 2016, and conducted an identification parade inside the jail, the victim’s family refused to identify the three men. All of them were subsequently found to be innocent, causing severe embarrassment to the police, confirmed CBI lawyer Amit Chaudhary.
The controversy did not end there. A SWAT team was deployed, and police once again claimed success by arresting six more suspects. However, the CBI’s investigation exposed yet another flawed narrative- three of these six were also found innocent. Serious questions arose about the pressure under which the police were operating and the basis on which innocent people were repeatedly branded as criminals.
The breakthrough finally came after critical intelligence was shared by the Haryana police, which helped the CBI identify and crack down on the actual gang involved in the crime.
The CBI, after an extensive and evidence-driven probe, filed two charge sheets, first on November 5, 2016 and second (supplementary) on April 18, 2018. The first detailed the involvement of the real gang members, establishing their guilt through technical evidence and proper identification. The second charge sheet documented police negligence and investigative failures that had derailed the case in its early stages.
It has also been alleged that on the night of the crime, when the victims desperately sought help, the police response was evasive. The local police initially attempted to downplay the incident as a case of simple robbery and hesitated to invoke stringent charges such as gangrape, father of the victim alleged.