BENGALURU: Four persons were arrested on Thursday in connection with the molestation and assault of a woman near her friend’s house in Kammanahalli on New Year’s day, a shocking incident caught on camera that caused national outrage.
City Police Commissioner Praveen Sood gave the names of the arrested as Aiyappa (19), Leno (20), Sudesh (20) and Somashekar (24), all residents of Kammanahalli.
The neighbourhood boys had been stalking the victim for four or five days and molested her when she was returning home after celebrating the New Year.
“Two others are still at large, and we have identified them. We are hopeful of nabbing them at the earliest,” Sood said.Police sources said, “Of the two, James was nabbed subsequently (formal arrest is yet to be made) while the other whose nickname is Puppy is yet to be arrested.” Aiyappa, the main culprit, and Sudesh are delivery boys while Leno is a BCom dropout and works as a helper and Somashekar works as a driver.
“On January 1, at 2.41am, Aiyappa who was riding the scooter had intercepted the woman on the road. Leno was riding pillion. The other two accused who were waiting at the corner of the road alerted them by honking when they saw a vehicle approaching,” an investigating official said.
The police said, “Initially looking at the footage we thought it was the public who were watching the incident. But a few CCTV images that we collected showed that they were in fact the other two accomplices.”
All the accused were in an inebriated state and were going around on bikes screaming ‘Happy New Year’ and creating a nuisance. As soon as they saw the victim and her friend in an auto, they followed them from a distance of around half a kilometre, the police sources said.
The victim used to come to her friend’s place very often but lived in a different place. However, for the past one week she had been staying with her friend, the sources said.
“The victim who is in touch with the police refused to come to the police station to identify the accused. However, the police sent images on WhatsApp and she confirmed Aiyappa’s identity. The police investigations too had confirmed that these were indeed the accused,” a police source said.
Sood said, “We are in touch with the victim and are building her confidence. We have promised to protect her identity and will help her in every way.”
The arrests come three days after a CCTV footage surfaced showing two scooter-borne men accost a woman while one molests her.In the footage, one of the two men is first seen approaching the woman, forcing himself on her and dragging her to the scooter, before pinning her down. As she resists and tries to free herself, he pushes her down on the road and he and the pillion rider both escape from the scene.
On alleged incidents of molestation on Brigade Road and MG Road on New Year’s Eve, Sood said the police are yet to receive credible evidence of “mass molestation” at the spots.
The youngsters accused of molesting and assaulting a woman in Kammanahalli on January 1 were hoping that they could get away with what they had done. It was only after they watched CCTV footage of their act on news channels that they realised they were now the objects of nationwide hatred, and went into hiding.
According to investigating officials, information about the incident was shared with higher officials and a suo motu case was registered on January 3. All this, thanks to Prashanth Francis, a resident on 5th Main Road where the incident took place. It was his CCTV camera which captured the horrific incident.
Police teams were then formed to nab the accused. The youths, all locals, had no clue that they were being tracked.
Police sources said that none of the accused have any criminal record. However, they are yet to confirm this with the City Crime Records Bureau.
A police source said, “The teams used three methods to trace the accused — CCTV footage, phone numbers that were active in the area at the time of the crime and gathering information from locals. Based on these, police detained 12 people for questioning since January 3.”
The police teams took the digital video record from Francis’s CCTV but were unable to identify any of the accused. Initially, police thought that two men who were seen in the video waiting at the end of the road were passersby. But other CCTV footage from nearby showed that they were accomplices of the accused — Sudesh and Somashekar.
Police gathered CCTV footage from six other commercial establishments in the area but only three of them were clear. What really helped the cops crack the case was CCTV footage from a nearby locality.
In one of the videos, Somashekar, who was riding a scooter, stopped in front of Bucket Biryani shop near Kullappa Circle after the incident and accidentally looked at a camera. The local police team identified him as he is known as Chinnu in the locality. Police said that he often visited a shop near Kullappa Circle with his friends to smoke.
Police then picked Somashekar for questioning and he revealed the names of the other accused.
But by then the others had absconded to their relatives’ houses and switched off their phones. Next on the list was Sudesh. He was picked up and this was followed by police tracking down the main accused Aiyappa to his relative’s house in Kammanahalli.