Port Blair gangrape: Former Chief Secy destroyed evidence, there were more victims, finds SIT

The Indian Express, which first reported the case and the possibility of more women being victimized in the sex-for-jobs scam in Port Blair, has learnt that the SIT has detailed the existence of more victims in its chargesheet filed in a Port Blair Court on February 3.

Sources said the SIT has detailed how a protected witness in the case has testified about more women visiting the official residence of then Chief Secretary Jitendra Narain.

It is learnt that the chargesheet, running into over 900 pages, has revealed that both Jitendra Narain’s co-accused, Rishi and hotel owner Sandeep Singh, have, in their disclosure statements, corroborated the precise sequence of events as furnished by the gangrape victim but have tried to cover up their roles. The three accused are in judicial custody in Port Blair.

Narain and Rishi are understood to have confronted each other as part of the probe proceedings with the encounter being videographed as evidence. During this, it is learnt, Rishi repeated affirmed his disclosure  statement and said that Narain had asked him to bring women to his residence. Rishi also admitted that he took one more victim to the Chief Secretary’s residence.

Sources said that the SIT received two anonymous letters alleging more victims and that because of social stigma and Narain’s nature, they had not spoken up yet.

The official residence of the chief secretary in Port Blair where the women are suspected to have been taken. (Express photo by Ritu Sarin)

Indeed, the SIT admitted to being aware of a similar complaint against Narain by a victim — who was an A&N Government employee — and her allegations were being examined by the department’s Vishakha Committee on sexual harassment in the workplace.

The probe team is believed to have secured corroborative evidence such as details of tower locations, phone call records, route maps and several digital trails in the case.

Besides invoking key sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) relevant to the charges of gangrape, sexual intercourse by a person in authority, criminal intimidation and criminal conspiracy against Narain and two other accused, the special probe team is understood to have added another Section 201 IPC – for alleged destruction and disappearance of evidence.

It is learnt that the SIT has tracked down how Narain disposed of two Hard Disk Drives (HDDs) of CCTV cameras – first reported by The Indian Express on October 28, 2022 – at his official residence, the scene of the crime. He had installed the CCTV monitoring system in his bedroom and the day after his transfer orders arrived, on July 21, 2022, he asked his private secretary to call a CCTV technician to erase the entire footage, investigators said.

Investigation has revealed that the technician was told by Narain to reformat or erase the HDDs. When he was informed that the reformatting would take time, Narain instructed him to remove the two HDDs and hand them over to him.  Following this, the then Chief Secretary asked his secretary to have the two HDDs be sent out of Port Blair. Three days later, Narain left for a new posting in New Delhi.

The SIT is believed to have produced evidence that Rishi and Singh escaped from Port Blair to Kolkata together on August 24, 2022. Once Singh was arrested on November 11, 2022 he reportedly told interrogators that he had dumped his mobile phone in the water near a dam. Sources said marine divers were deployed in the dam area but the phone could not be traced.

Similarly, following the arrest of Rishi, no phone was found with him. He later admitted to leaving his phone in the car of a neighbour but on searching the car, no phone was located. The SIT is understood to have concluded that Section 201 IPC  (destruction of evidence) should also be invoked against Rishi and Singh.

Staff at the Chief Secretary’s house, including a protected witness, have reportedly testified that Narain had instructed that no entries be made for vehicles ferrying the women. Some of the staff would be locked up in the kitchen, they said, and even security guards on duty were confined to an area behind the bungalow when the women were present.