Outcry, questions over woman dragged by car

Outrage mounted on Monday over the grisly death of a 20-year-old woman who was dragged under a car for at least two hours and found dead on the road in the early hours of New Year’s Day, but niggling questions about the sequence of events that led to the horrific incident continued to trouble investigators.

Outrage mounted on Monday over the grisly death of a 20-year-old woman who was dragged under a car for at least two hours and found dead on the road in the early hours of New Year’s Day, but niggling questions about the sequence of events that led to the horrific incident continued to trouble investigators.

The Maruti Suzuki Baleno was seen in CCTV footage taking several U-turns and driving in the same neighbourhoods.

Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal called for the death penalty for the five men, suspected to be drunk, in the car and arrested for culpable homicide, even as his Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and lieutenant governor VK Saxena, who controls Delhi Police, were locked in a political battle.

Police say that the five men in a grey Maruti Suzuki Baleno hit the woman who was riding a scooty along with a friend in Sultanpuri; the impact entangled her body to the underside of the car; unaware of this, the men drove on from the accident site, dragging her body for at least 14km, before it dislodged in a mangled state and was found by local residents.

But as protests raged on the streets of the Capital on Monday, more questions and inconsistencies emerged about the crime, and how it occurred. Late in the evening, police said it had detained the woman’s friend who was riding the scooty with her, and who allegedly fled after the accident. The two women worked for an event management company and were on their way back from an event in a nearby area, police said.

Police said the five men had borrowed a friend’s car and were on their way back after drinking and eating when they hit the woman in Sultanpuri.

The first call was received by the police control room at 1.45am about a metallic blue scooty found on the road in Sultanpuri, indicating that the alleged accident happened either at this time or earlier. The first information report mentioned the time of accident as 2am. There is yet no CCTV footage or eyewitnesses of the alleged accident.

At 2.30am, police say the control room received a call from a resident of Vijay Vihar, who said he saw a car dragging along a body in Aman VIhar about 10-12km from where the body was found. It is not clear how this call was followed up or acted upon.

Roughly an hour later, at 3.24am, police say a dairy owner from Kanjhawala, now 2km from where the body was found, called the control room saying a Baleno car was dragging a body along. The man remained in touch with the police till 4am, in which time he reports the car doing at least three rounds of a local stretch. It is unclear whether the police dispatched a team to the spot when the call came in.

Finally, at 4.11am, a food delivery executive called the control room, saying a woman’s body was lying at a crossing in Kanjhawala. Police reached the spot at 4.15am. By 5am, the men had returned the car to the owners. Half an hour later, they were picked up by the police on charges of causing death due to negligence (304-A) and rash driving (279).

But the official sequence of events left many questions unanswered.

The first question was how exactly the body got entangled in the underside of the car, given that the scooty didn’t show any sign of damage that such a major accident would have inevitably caused. Questions were also raised about how the five men in the car didn’t realise they were dragging a woman along for nearly two-and-a-half hours.

Special commissioner of police Sagar Preet Hooda, said, “The five men have admitted they were drunk, playing loud music and did not realise initially they had crushed a woman and her body was under the car.”

The second question was about the sequence of events. The FIR and police statements indicated that the men were on the road between 1.45am and 4.11am — but only travelled a distance of 14km, triggering doubts about their speed and intent. Since the car was seen in CCTV footage taking several U-turns and driving in the same neighbourhoods, it was also unclear what their destination was. It was also not known whether they stopped at any points in between.

Special commissioner of police, Dependra Pathak said, “The road was not a proper road. They were deliberately driving the vehicle slowly to ensure that they were not spotted by police. They may also have driven slowly because of the fog. The CCTV footage shows they are driving at a slow pace.”

The victim’s family said the inconsistencies clearly indicated that the woman was sexually assaulted and the alleged accident was staged. They also pointed out that the woman had no clothes on when her body was discovered — though police suggested that the clothes could have been scraped off during her ordeal.

“Why would they drive around with a body under their vehicle for such a long time? Any person would have escaped and fled to their homes. The CCTV footages on television show the Baleno car taking U-turn multiple times. She also had no clothes on her body when it was formed. The police’s theory is not adding up,” said a 24-year-old cousin of the victim.

But this sparked questions about why perpetrators of a sexual assault would risk being seen with a body and not attempt to dispose of the victim clandestinely.

“It cannot be ascertained without the report of a post mortem examination. A medical board has conducted the autopsy at Maulana Azad Medical College on Monday evening. The reports are awaited. Based on the report, we will add other sections of the law,” said Hooda.

As investigators tried to unravel the threads of the ghastly crime, public outrage swelled. Protesters gathered outside the Sultanpuri Police station and blocked traffic, demanding grave punishment for the five men.

Rajesh, 42, who only goes by one name, said,“What were the police doing when the five men took multiple rounds at some corners of the stretch? Police did not even show the family the body of the victim. We are protesting here because we want justice.”

The AAP protested outside Saxena’s office and demanded his resignation. The party said the LG had failed to provide security to women in Delhi. “The LG has remained mum just because one of the accused is a member of the BJP. Now all the Delhi police and the LG is trying to bury the matter,” the party said in a statement. AAP’s chief spokesperson Saurabh Bharadwaj also said that one of the arrested men, Manoj Mittal, is a local leader and shared photographs of a political poster that was pasted outside the Sultanpuri police station.

The LG’s office said that Saxena had taken stock of the situation in a meeting with police commissioner Sanjiv Arora. “He reiterated his direction to the police commissioner that every angle and aspect of the case be looked into and the strictest possible sections be invoked against the accused, who are already in custody,” said an official at the LG office. “LG instructed the police commissioner to strictly ensure that the accused are treated as per law, irrespective of their socio-economic standing or political affiliations,” added the official.

While a report of the autopsy, conducted on Monday evening, is awaited, officials from the Forensic Science Laboratory reached the spot in the afternoon to collect samples.

The five men, meanwhile, have told the police that the borrowed the car, bought liquor in Rani Bagh and then went to Murthal in Haryana. According to their statement to the police, the men returned to Sultanpuri at around 1.30am, and between 1.30am and 1.45am, they ran over the woman at the Shani Bazar road in Sultanpuri.

To be sure, the confession of the five men before the police is not admissible as evidence in court.

Delhi police officers said that there are three police barricades in the area and a probe will be conducted to find out how the accused managed to drive for nearly two hours without being caught.

A city court on Monday afternoon sent the five men to three-day police custody.

The FIR also says that the police recovered a black shoe and they are probing if it belonged to the victim.