‘I knew him for years… he was a close friend. Didn’t know this would happen’: Decade after attack, her pain endures

In the summer of 2008, fresh from completing her MBBS in Belarus, Arushi returned to Delhi to join a government hospital. Their home was filled with pride — she was the first doctor in a family of an army veteran.

In 2011, she joined another hospital — the one she was working at in 2014 — as a junior and worked her way up, with grueling 16-hour shifts being a daily feature.

Like any traditional family, her parents wanted her to settle down. In November 2014, her father had found a match from the same village.

Then, her life took a turn.

“I didn’t know this was what was going to happen… I had known him for years,” she says.

The attack

December 23, 2014, was a typical Delhi winter morning. A shaft of late-morning sunlight carved through the winter chill as she sat on her white Honda Activa around 9 am. She had bought this scooter and preferred to ride it to the hospital. She had a car too, but preferred the two-wheeler.

Like every morning, she was crossing a popular market in West Delhi on her way to the hospital. This market, one of the busiest in the city, had begun to fill with people. “Traders were busy setting up their stalls or opening the shutters of their shops. So the crowd was still thin,” a police officer, who used to patrol the area, says.

Around 9.30 am, a black Bajaj Pulsar bike suddenly appeared on the road near her. “CCTV footage showed two people, their faces wrapped in bandanas, riding it. They looked young. The driver was wearing a blue jacket,” a police officer recalls.

For a few minutes, they drove parallel to Arushi. Suddenly, the pillion rider, who wore a white jacket and a white wool beanie, pivoted towards her, laying his hand on her bag.

“It happened in a split second. I didn’t get time to react,’’ she had told investigators.

“Suddenly, I felt a splash of water hit my face. I stopped and saw the duo on the bike speeding away with my bag,” she told the police.

She also noticed the pillion rider throw something — it was a syringe.

Within seconds, a burning sensation consumed the left side of her face and eye. The attackers had thrown acid at her using the syringe.

The pain was so excruciating that she started to scream. The acid was cutting into the skin of her face and the inside of her left eye.

Many bystanders saw her holding her face in agony, but didn’t help. “No one had come to her aid… they just watched from a distance,” another police officer remembers.

Somehow, Arushi found her phone. “My right eye had escaped the acid, and I searched for the number of a colleague and friend… I called him,” she had told the police during her initial statements.

She called Dr Ashok Yadav. “Ashok was one of her closest friends. He was the only one she could think of at that agonising time,” a police officer, who investigated the case, says.

Ashok rushed to the spot and hurried her to the AIIMS Trauma Centre.

Four hours after the acid attack, she recorded her first statement before the police team that took up the investigation. “I don’t suspect anyone. Why would anyone want to harm me?” she told the investigators.

Another police officer involved in the probe recalls, “She was in shock.”

But their probe revealed something nefarious. “CCTV cameras had recorded the bike tailing her right from the moment she left her home,” the officer says. “She had no clue that she was followed. She denied any knowledge about the identity of her assailants.”

For a while, the investigators were in the dark — they had no motive. They didn’t know if it was a robbery gone wrong. They didn’t have the faces of the assailants.

Then, a colleague remembered a crucial detail, the officer recalls.

“The syringe!” he had exclaimed. “They used a syringe”.

“This wasn’t a robbery,’’ he had said. “How did these two juveniles get the idea to use a syringe to throw acid? There is more to this attack.”

There was one silver lining, though. The bike’s number plate was visible in the CCTV footage.

Police ran the prints and found it had been stolen two weeks earlier from West Delhi.

They tracked the bike’s location, combined with CCTV footage of the theft, and nabbed the assailants from their hideout. “The area where the two were last seen was searched, and the duo was nabbed from a flat,” a police officer says.

They were juveniles.

“We recovered a syringe and a bottle of acid from them. It was not a regular off-the-shelf syringe, and the acid was not the kind that you find in a store. As forensic results had already shown, it was potent. It seemed like all this material had been collected by someone who had access to medical labs,” the officer adds.

Police now started questioning everyone close to Arushi.

And Ashok was the first on the list. The investigators asked the woman again if she had any suspects in mind. “Then we asked a question — ‘how has Dr Ashok been with you?’” the police officer recalls.

“And as soon as we asked this question, she snapped at us.”

The woman was so upset, she gave an ultimatum. “Question anyone but not Dr Ashok. If you do so, I will withdraw my complaint,” she told the investigators.

The friendship

Arushi and Ashok had known each other for a decade. They first met in Belarus in 2004, where Ashok was visiting his friends who were pursuing an MBBS from a local university. One of them was Arushi’s batchmate — she was introduced to Ashok through him.

Ashok was 22 at the time, completing his MBBS in St Petersburg. He had moved to the Russian city in 2001 from his hometown, Mundahera, in Haryana. The son of a retired ITBP commandant, Ashok, too, was the first in his family to become a doctor.

After the chance meeting, he and Arushi remained in touch, on and off — mostly about professional prospects in India, a police officer says.

“Ashok returned to India around 2006, preparing for the Medical Council of India (MCI) exams. In 2008, the woman came back to Delhi as well. They met once, at a gathering of common friends. Then Ashok went back to St. Petersburg for further studies, and they were no longer in touch,” the officer says.

In 2009, Ashok came back and started interning at the hospital where Arushi was practising first.

They lived just 2 km apart. They became good friends; even their families would meet often, whenever they were in Delhi.

So, police focused on questioning the two juveniles. They admitted that they got the acid and the syringes from a 20-year-old man, who worked at a call centre in Naraina.

“We arrested this 20-year-old man at his home. He admitted to the crime, saying that he had been training the juveniles in the ‘skill’ of quick syringe spray for the past month. He said he even put water in the syringes, and gave them to the juveniles — asking them to spray it on him for practice,” a police officer recalls.

The 20-year-old didn’t mention Ashok and claimed he had planned the robbery for a quick buck. Police didn’t buy it. And when his phone was scanned, they found he had made a call hours after the incident — the number was registered in Ashok’s name.

On Christmas morning, police arrested Ashok. “The evidence was stacked against him, and he broke down during questioning. He admitted to the crime,’’ the police officer says.

The pieces now began falling into place.

Ever since his college days in Russia, Ashok would tell the police, he had feelings for Arushi.

“He said it was love at first sight,” a police officer who questioned Ashok says.

He dreamt of marrying her. “When I saw her again in Delhi, all my feelings came rushing back,” Ashok told the investigators.

He told the police that he waited till they completed their studies to pop the question in August 2013.

But Arushi said no. She didn’t see him as anything more than a friend.

“He was rejected by the woman. She clearly told him that her parents won’t allow her to marry outside the community,” the police officer recalls. “But since she had known him as a close friend for a long time, she didn’t want that to change.”

Ashok had no option. He agreed to be a friend — but he was obsessed with her.

“I couldn’t see a way to change her mind. But I couldn’t leave her either,” the police officer recalls Ashok telling them.
An investigator reveals that after the woman joined the West Delhi hospital in June 2014, she helped Ashok get a job there in three months.

Though Ashok agreed to a platonic friendship with Arushi, he was enraged when he found out she was to be married. “He was already jealous that she spoke to other male doctors; he argued with her constantly over this. And now, she was going to marry someone else. He felt she was using him,” the officer says.

“In October 2014, when she told him her engagement had been finalised, it hit Ashok hard. But he didn’t say anything,” the police officer says.

“Inside, he felt betrayed. He wanted to do something that would somehow make her marry him…”

Police say he devised a plan. “He thought if he disfigured the bride-to-be, the groom’s family would automatically back off, and that would clear his path. So he decided to throw acid at her face,” the police officer says.

Ashok, however, couldn’t manage the attack himself. But he knew exactly who could help him — the 20-year-old.

A crime is hatched

The two had met in 2012. At the time, the 20-year-old was in a juvenile detention centre in connection with a robbery case. Ashok was working on a project for his MBE (Master’s in Bioethics) degree and was a regular at the centre. Ashok soon forged a bond with him.

“The man got out in 2012 and struggled to earn a living. He sought help from Ashok, who got him the call centre job. He felt indebted to him ever since,” the officer says.

Thus, when Ashok called him for help, he was more than willing to oblige him. “Ashok told us he explained the situation, requesting him to get this job done,” the police officer says. “The 20-year-old had been part of the criminal world; he knew a few juveniles who could execute the plan. He contacted them.”

The accused roped in two juveniles and promised Rs 25,000 for the attack. “The 20-year-old told us he paid them Rs 22,000 in advance. Ashok arranged the acid and syringes. The accused made the two juveniles practice for the attack. He told us he made one of them throw water with the syringe several times while riding pillion to make sure the plan succeeds,” the police officer says.

“Once he was confident they were ready, all that was left was to carry out their plan.”

In early December, police say, Ashok told the 20-year-old that he would be at Arushi’s home and would step out with her in the evening to dispose of garbage in her society’s trash can.

“He asked him to bring the juveniles and observe her from a distance, so they can recognise her clearly. The juveniles also did multiple recces around the house to observe her routine,” another police officer says.

Transcription of chats between Ashok and the 20-year-old revealed that the accused came close to attacking the woman multiple times.

“Hua? (Is it done?),” asks Ashok on WhatsApp on December 12, 2014

“Nai, vo nikal gayi thi (No, she left),” he replies.

“Tumhare bus ki nai hai (I don’t think you can do this),” Ashok answers.

“Aaj kya hua? (What happened today?),” asks Ashok on December 14.

“Bike nikali saamne se (The bike crossed her),” the 20-year-old says.

“Maine cash bhi nikaal liya tha dene ke liye (I withdrew cash to pay you),” says Ashok

“Kal de dena (give it tomorrow),” the 20-year-old says.

“Chat delete karo saari (Delete all the chats),” says Ashok.

On December 17, 2014, the two juveniles waited for Arushi to come out of her house. They already knew her routine. “But that day, she decided to take her car. The juveniles abandoned the plan,” the police officer says.

“They returned on December 23. She took her scooter that day. They followed her and everything happened according to their plan,” he adds.

When Ashok took her to AIIMS, the two juveniles and the 20-year-old waited for him in a park. “They buried her bag that they had snatched. We recovered it later,” the police officer says.

Ashok’s arrest in the case broke the woman and her family. A police officer, who was in touch with them, recalls that for months, Arushi couldn’t accept that her close friend was the actual perpetrator.

On July 27, 2025, the Delhi High Court sentenced Ashok to 12 years of rigorous imprisonment and a fine of Rs 5 lakh. He had been in jail for the last 10 years. The 20-year-old was awarded eight years of imprisonment. The court also directed the Delhi State Legal Services to award suitable compensation to the woman.

Arushi, meanwhile, married the man she was engaged to in 2014. They have a child. She continues working as a doctor at the same hospital.

Time has helped dull her close friend’s betrayal — but not the brutal consequences of his actions.

“The (court) decision has come… But I will live with the pain for the rest of my life,” she says.

(*Name changed at request)