Rape of US woman in 2015: Police write to victim, ask her to depose via videoconference

An email was sent to her on December 21, the day after Baldev was arrested from his in-laws’ place in Ludhiana on December 20.

DSP (Women and Child support unit) Anjitha Chepyala said, “We have been in touch with the US woman through emails for the last one-and-a-half years. Though we have informed her about the arrest of the accused auto driver, Baldev Singh, through email, we are yet to receive any reply from her side. We are in the process of making a request to the judiciary to allow us to record the testimony of the foreigner woman through videoconference and simultaneously convince her to appear via videoconference. Once we get permission, we will try to record the woman’s statement under Section 164 CrPC and also do the identification parade of Baldev through videoconference.”

The officer said that the woman usually replied to mails that the police had been sending her after a week or even more, so they would wait for her response.

Baldev was arrested through the IMEI number of one of the phones that he had stolen from the woman, sources in the police said,

“The first clue came in March 2017. We built up the leads and traced the house of Baldev in Patiala. By that time, he had shifted base and started driving a truck in Uttar Pradesh. As we raided his house in Patiala, he was alerted and avoided visiting it.”

The probe officer, SI Satnam Singh, said, “Subsequently, we managed to access the phone number that was currently being used by Baldev with the help of a UP-based transporter. On December 20, Baldev came from Rampur in UP to Ludhiana and stayed at the house of his in-laws. We raided the house and arrested him. We hope to recover one of the iPhones of the US woman that was once used by Baldev. Another iPhone was locked at the time it was robbed from the woman and Baldev disclosed that he had thrown it somewhere near Kharar,” said the source.

The woman had remembered the registration number of Baldev’s auto partially.

On December 23, police recovered the auto from a scrap dealer in Patiala. Though its engine number had been sold by the dealer who had bought it from Baldev, the chassis number matched.

At the time he allegedly raped the woman in April 2015, Baldev was driving the auto, given to him by his brother-in-law, Vikram. A Kurukshetra resident, Gaganpreet Singh, is a crucial witness, who identified the auto driver, Baldev Singh, and recorded his statement with the police.

A case was registered at Sector 17 police station.