Cops in pink, a judge playing cricket and a toy tractor: how police worked through trauma, secured death penalty for Rajkot child’s rapist

That statement would later prove to be the clinching evidence leading to death penalty for the accused, Ramsingh Tersingh Dudwa, within just over 40 days of registering the First Information Report (FIR).

The toy tractor that clinched the case

In this case, the distinguishing identifier was a toy, a different one in the hand of each of the eight men standing behind the one-way glass through which they were unable to see the survivor on the other side. This was done so that there was something concrete for the very young, highly traumatised survivor to focus on and hopefully be distracted from the grim purpose at hand.

Madhya Pradesh resident Dudwa, who was later convicted, had allegedly used an iron rod to brutalise her before fleeing the scene. In mid-December, the 32-year-old and seven other men were made to stand in this test identification parade with toys in their hands. The child chose the orange tractor, which he held.

“The Executive Magistrate then shuffled the toys between the eight people behind the glass. And this time, the survivor again chose the ball that was in Dudwa’s hands,” said Bhartiba Sarvaiya, a woman police constable who had become one of the closest confidantes of the young survivor over the 40 days between the filing of the FIR on December 8 and sentencing on January 17.

This identification parade was one of the pieces of evidence relied on by District Government Pleader S K Vora during the trial to help secure Dudwa’s conviction in record time.

A burning desire to go to school

However, the identification parade came much later and only after the police team deployed to the care of the young child had won her trust and confidence with the promise of education, a burning desire for which they noticed almost immediately. Having already missed three years of education because she had never been enrolled in a school by her extremely impoverished migrant farm labourer parents, she would see schoolchildren walking by the farm her parents worked on, and her eyes would light up.

And this, decided the investigators, would be the mainstay of their work to help the girl through her trauma and give her something to focus on – the future.

“When we reached the hospital on December 8, the girl was extremely traumatised and wary of any unknown people. We sat with her in the hospital, took snacks and chocolates with her, and played with her while a relative sat beside us, and she developed trust over a period of two days,” said Geeta Galchar, another constable, who bonded with the child along with constable Sarvaiya – something that would not only help her identify the accused, but also help her through the legal system through which she was put through at such a young age.

While the crime took place on December 4, the women constables reached the girl on the night of December 8, hours after doctors made out a medico-legal case and an FIR was filed in the jurisdictional police station.

It took several hours before she opened up a little and began talking to the women constables, but only after all uniformed personnel were removed from her sight. Even Rajkot Rural Superintendent of Police (SP) Vijay Singh Gurjar was “told” by his staff to only visit in civilian clothes. Nobody wearing a khaki uniform or bearing a weapon was allowed to come near the child.

Letting her guard down

“Initially, she did not say a single word for about four hours. We just kept sitting with her. We then began asking her about herself and her family, leading her to speak to us hesitatingly. But the moment we attempted to ask her about the incident, she clammed up immediately and so we changed the topic. After several more hours of playing, eating snacks and watching cartoon videos, she finally loosened up enough so we could begin to ask her about the incident,” said Sarvaiya.

It was then, in the 48-hour period between December 8 and 10, that the girl described her attacker as someone “who had come on a black motorcycle, caught her hand while she was playing with other children, took her behind the water tank and inserted the metal rod inside her. She screamed, leading to her aunt running to the spot, and Dudwa running away. She then told her mother everything and was then taken to a local hospital, to a bigger centre and reached Rajkot Civil Hospital”.

“We initially had about 200 suspects in the case. The child then helped us by describing her attacker and whittled down the list. She told us he was tall, heavyset, had a beard, had worn a red topi (cap) and had a black motorcycle. So we began cross-checking all suspects matching this description and made a dossier of photos. We showed the child about 50 photos from which she pointed out Dudwa. She would answer ‘hau’ or ‘na’ (yes or no) based on the questions and spoke in a mix of Gujarat and Hindi,” said an officer of the Local Crime Branch (LCB).

The LCB team led by Police Sub-Inspector P N Bharwad, deployed to stay with the child and her family through the process, remained constantly at their side with Constable Manoj driving them around wherever required.

Simran Bhardwaj, Additional Superintendent of Police (ASP), who is the Investigation Officer (IO) in this case, first met the survivor at her home after she was discharged from the hospital. “The first meeting we had, she did not say anything and would not even look at me. I had taken a bag of chocolates for her but to no avail,” said the 2022-batch IPS officer.

Describing the initial failure in taking the survivor’s statement, ASP Bhardwaj said, “We realised early on that while she had bonded with the two women constables, making her speak up in front of any other stranger was going to be a major challenge and that is what happened on December 11. She was taken to give her statement under BNSS Section 183 before a magistrate. Despite best efforts, she did not say a single word and the effort was abandoned.”

Preparing for two key days

Then, the police decided that this had to be remedied. The child had recovered physically but she was extremely vulnerable from a mental health point of view and thus had to be brought out of her trauma at least to the extent that she could help her own case in court. “So we changed our strategy. We realised that she had a fascination with school. She wasn’t enrolled anywhere, but would see children crossing her farm in uniform and with bags, and she too wanted to go to school. So, we told her that all these preparations and questions were meant to get her admitted to school and that we would be her teachers,” said Bhardwaj.

The police decided on two major events for which the child would need to be prepared – one was the second attempt at taking her statement, and the other was the Test Identification Parade. So they told her that she would meet her “school principal” on these two days.

To prepare for the upcoming days, ASP Bhardwaj said, “We took her shopping and purchased a school bag for her, which made her excited at the prospect of going to school. We then took her to buy dresses and purchased two frocks, one each for these two big days. She picked out a pink frock and another white frock. She also chose a pair of golden ballerina shoes to go with the dress. We told her we would all wear matching pink together.”

Everyone goes the extra mile

When the day for the second attempt at taking her statement under BNSS 183 arrived on December 16, ASP Bhardwaj said she had directly reached from an official briefing and was still in uniform. “So, we kept her sitting in the car while I changed out of my uniform. We then asked all uniformed police to go into one room in the court complex. Before she entered the court, we cleared the corridors of anyone wearing black and white as well.”

She added, “The magistrate, very kindly, herself took some chocolates for the child and even played cricket with her in her chamber to make her comfortable. She also kept her robe aside to make sure the child would not be intimidated. Since the police are not legally permitted inside, we were all tensely waiting outside and suddenly heard the girl crying loudly. We were all shattered. When we were allowed in, we asked her what happened. She said she was hungry and demanded something very specific – pani puri. So we fed her pani puris and it ultimately took about six hours to take the one-and-a-half page statement but it was finally done.” The six hours were interspersed with bouts of music and dancing as well.

Then came the other major challenge – the Test Identification Parade, where the survivor had to pick out her attacker from a line-up of men. However, since this case was very sensitive, the police did not want to bring the child and her attacker face-to-face. And so they sought dispensation to change jurisdiction and conduct the parade at the Rajkot District and Sessions Court, with Rajkot Collector Dr Om Prakash providing another Executive Magistrate to conduct the process.

However, even as the eight men were lined up behind the glass, the girl kept “phasing out”. That is when they came up with the idea of using toys to distinguish the men in the line-up to keep her distracted from the matter at hand. However, among the eight men behind the glass, only one of them, Ramsingh Dudwa, had bandages on both his legs from when he had been shot by the police while allegedly attempting to attack them with a scythe during reconstruction of the crime scene on December 10. So, the other seven men also got similar bandages tied to their legs to keep the proceedings fair,” said SP Gurjar.

“The child first identified an orange tractor held by the accused and then, after being shuffled, she pointed to a coloured ball, again in the hands of the accused person, as mentioned in the report,” said Constable Sarvaiya.

A four-year-old witness

The police faced a tougher job with one of the witnesses to the brutal incident, who was a four-year-old cousin of the survivor. However, officers said he had a good memory and managed to describe what he had seen that day while driving around the room in a toy car. This eyewitness, said police, also identified the accused person in the identification parade.

The police then compiled the documentation, including “conclusive” forensic laboratory reports, established an unbroken chain of custody of the evidence, and medical reports, statements and filed the chargesheet on December 19, 2025. The police and the family requested a fast-track trial, which the court agreed to, and so began day-to-day hearings in the case.

This brought the police to another problem. While the needs of the child had been accommodated so far, by the police, judiciary, doctors, et al, a trial was still supposed to be conducted with courtroom decorum. Public prosecutors helped prepare the family for court proceedings. However, during the trial too, in consideration of the child, the advocates had seen fit to remove their robes while the child was in the courtroom and the accused was made present only on video conference, said police officers.

Gave testimony in her new frock, riding a toy car

Bringing into sharp focus the lack of hope for justice the poor have from the system, SP Gurjar said, “One of the major challenges for the police was also to keep the survivor’s family motivated during this entire process. They are farm labourers and initially believed that they would not get any kind of justice and that we were running around just for show.”

“They hesitated even giving the statements but we asked them to speak the truth and leave the rest to the court. The mother of the survivor was especially disturbed by the entire traumatic episode and required counselling, which was provided to her,” he added.

But the most important part of this trial would still be the testimony of the survivor in the court. The child, dressed in her new white frock and riding a blue toy car, “gave her testimony with great clarity and conviction,” said a police officer.

SP Gurjar said that the officer sent by the Child Welfare Committee (CWC), and the psychiatrists at both the Rajkot Civil Hospital and AIIMS Rajkot had helped alleviate the trauma of the child, while the forensic team had fast-tracked the reports that enabled the quick trial and conviction.

Subsequently, the trial court in Rajkot convicted Ramsingh Tersingh Dudwa in the case on January 12, and sentenced him to death on January 17.

SP Gurjar said, “During the trial, the court gave Dudwa two days to prepare a closing statement as well. The defence also argued against the death sentence, pleading that the convict has children of his own.”

The incident had taken place on December 4, 2025, and the FIR was filed on December 8. Dudwa was arrested under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (Pocso) Act on December 9, the chargesheet was filed on December 19, and the trial was conducted on a day-to-day basis. The conviction came on January 12, and the sentencing was on January 17.

Speaking on the development at a press conference in Rajkot, SP Gurjar said, “A team led by ASP Simran Bhardwaj conducted the investigation. They collected physical and technical evidence, took witness statements, conducted identification parades, and filed the chargesheet within 12 days on December 19.”

The SP added, “The survivor herself and other children playing with her gave statements before the court and the child who had gone through abject torture, spoke well in court… The court also ordered Rs 7 lakh compensation to the survivor.”

Now, with the family having relocated to another village in Rural Rajkot, SP Gurjar said the police are working on getting the survivor admitted to a school, turning the well-meaning charade in the quest for justice into a hope for a better life for this child – a real survivor.