Pune Crime Files: How Railway Police detected rape, murder of minor girl whose body was found stuffed in suitcase on a platform

A team of GRP’s Local Crime Branch (LCB) initiated a probe into this case.

A SIM card

While there were no CCTV cameras around the spot where the suitcase was dumped on the railway platform, the police found a SIM card in the victim’s pants during the search of her clothes. Her body was then sent to the Sassoon Hospital for a postmortem examination. As per police records, the postmortem report later confirmed she sustained injury while resisting the sexual assault.

GRP conducted a technical investigation into the SIM card to get its mobile number, and the details of the phone calls made. The report showed that a real estate agent from Nalasopara had called this number several times. When the police contacted him, and showed him the photographs of the minor girl’s body, he identified the girl.

He told the police that the girl came to his shop to ask for a pen, while she was on her way to a nearby mobile shop to recharge her cell phone. Later, they started talking frequently, and the girl told him she lived in an apartment nearby where three men, Santosh, Rahul, and Zishan, harassed her sexually, confiscated her SIM card, and tore her clothes. The real estate agent gave her a SIM card to talk to him, and bought her some clothes.

The police probe showed the girl told the real estate agent that she was being forced to open a bank account for some financial transactions related to the crimes committed by the men who harassed her sexually.

The police laid a trap at the girl’s residence on the seventh floor of a building in Nalasopara, and nabbed the accused, Rahul and Jishan. They also nabbed their colleague Santosh at Wadala.

During further investigation, the police seized as many as 45 passbooks, 56 ATM cards, and 33 chequebooks from the arrested men. They also arrested another man for his alleged involvement in the criminal conspiracy.

‘Catastrophic mind’, ‘unjust ways’

Meanwhile, the police traced the girl’s parents, who belonged to a lower middle-class family in Mumbai, and found she was a school dropout. A police officer said the girl left home a fortnight before her murder, saying she was going out with a female friend, but did not return. Her parents had not filed any missing person report.

According to the police probe, she was lured by Santosh, who was already married, and he made her stay with his aide, Rahul, in Nalasopara. Santosh and his aides allegedly harassed her sexually on the spot.

The police said Santosh, who was booked for four criminal offences in the past, allegedly masterminded the crime. They said he wanted the girl to help him in their crimes. When she was reluctant, the accused allegedly raped her and to prevent her from disclosing their names, strangled her with a dupatta in Nalasopara on the night of May 6, 2014. They then stuffed her dead body in a suitcase, and carried it from Nalasopara to Talegaon in private vehicles and dumped it at an isolated spot in railway station premises on May 7 and fled.

The police charge sheeted the accused under the Indian Penal Code (IPC) sections for kidnapping, rape and murder, and also under sections of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (Pocso) Act.

On May 26, 2023, a special court in Pune held Santosh, Rahul, and Jishan guilty and sentenced them to rigorous imprisonment for life. The court acquitted the fourth accused, citing a lack of evidence.

In the judgement, the court cited a shloka from Vidur Niti along with its translation in English. According to the shloka, “A catastrophic mind gets polluted with substitution of just by unjust and such mind then lands in a vicious cycle of adopting unjust ways one after the other, unwary of the consequences.”