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Journalism of Courage
In 2012, a 27-year-old Spanish national was robbed and raped at knifepoint by a man at her residence in an upscale area in Mumbai’s Bandra. After the act, the woman had managed to lock herself up in the bathroom and raised an alarm for help, following which the man escaped. The police investigation began with clues about the man’s identity based on the description given by the woman. But it was another detail that helped them catch the accused – his proclivity for scaling pipes and climbing buildings.
On the night of the incident, the man had entered the third-floor flat where the woman resided through a window. Investigation revealed that the man had climbed the first floor of another bungalow on the same night. After someone noticed him and screamed, he jumped from a height and escaped. He then entered another flat on the fourth floor through a drainage pipe and a window where he stole valuables before entering the victim’s flat in the same manner.
The Bandra police began finding clues about this modus operandi among thieves, where the accused scaled pipes, jumped buildings and entered homes through windows – also casually referred to as the Spiderman thief. The police narrowed down on five suspects based on their records of thefts committed with a similar modus operandi. Among those questioned was 28-year-old Badshah Ansari. His antecedents, including a theft he had committed in the home of a Bollywood actor a week before the incident, were part of the police record, categorised on the basis of the peculiar modus operandi relied upon.
The police visited his residence where he was present. From his interrogation, the police found his responses to be suspicious and subsequently confirmed his involvement in the crime on the basis of evidence, including the description by the victim. Two days after his arrest, he was also identified by the victim during the test identification parade.
During the trial, the court relied on the police’s submission that they had cracked the case on the basis of the modus operandi adopted by Ansari. The court said that the police had in the chargesheet added details about the 32 cases filed against Ansari of crimes committed in a similar manner in which he broke into homes and committed thefts. The court also relied on forensic evidence, including the DNA of the accused matching that from the clothes and bedsheet of the victim, the recovery of stolen valuables from him and the testimony of the victim over video conference from Germany where she was based during the trial.
A year after the incident, a sessions court in Mumbai on December 27, 2013, sentenced Ansari to life imprisonment on charges including rape, stating that maximum punishment was necessary to act as a deterrent and send a signal that “there is zero tolerance to offences against safety and security of women in India”.
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