Delhi Police on Wednesday finally arrested the man accused of molesting a 21-year-old woman and flashing at her at the Jor Bagh metro station last month. The accused, Manav Aggarwal, 40, is a resident of Gurugram and currently unemployed.
The incident took place on June 2 and went public the same night when the woman narrated her ordeal through a series of posts on Twitter.
In her statement to the police subsequently, the woman said she was a resident of Gurugram and on the day of the incident, a man approached her and inquired about the route to Delhi University while she was travelling from Huda City Centre to the Jor Bagh metro station.
She alighted from the train at Jor Bagh and found the accused tailing her on the platform. When she sat on a bench inside the station to book a taxi online, the accused showed her a file on the pretext of verifying the address. “While she was trying to see the file, he thrust his private part on her face, following which she ran away from the spot and later at midnight posted the entire episode on Twitter,” said DCP (Metro) Jitendra Mani.
Massive operation
Elaborating on how they managed to track Manav down, the DCP said several teams of the Metro police were constituted to identify and arrest the accused after a case under sections of the Indian Penal Code pertaining to assault or criminal force used on a woman was lodged at the INA Metro police station.
“The electronic surveillance systems of the trains and metro stations were scanned in order to identify and trace the accused,” he said. Simultaneously, the Special Police Unit for Women and Children was in regular touch with the woman to counsel her and extend all necessary help, the DCP said.
Police teams intensified the scrutiny of CCTV footage of all metro stations of the Yellow Line, particularly in and around the entry and exit points.
“The search to locate the perpetrator was successful and he was spotted entering through the escalator at Gate No. 1 of the Sikandarpur metro station in the morning,” DCP Mani said. The information was shared with other team members who inquired at places nearby, asking shopkeepers, autorickshaw drivers and other local residents about Manav.
“The CDRs (call detail records) and CAF (customer application form) of the accused and his location were obtained, and the photo on the accused’s CAF matched with his face... the location was also matching from the time of the CCTV footage,” the DCP said.
Bid for bail
The police subsequently conducted a raid on the accused’s house but found it locked. It later transpired that Manav had fled to Nepal on June 4. He approached a Saket court for anticipatory bail and then the Delhi High Court after the lower court had rejected his plea.
“The High Court was not inclined to grant a satisfactory order, so we withdrew it,” Pradeep Kumar Arya, counsel for Manav, told The Hindu. Justice S.K. Sharma dismissed the anticipatory bail plea on July 4 as withdrawn.
“He was eventually nabbed from near the Saket court,” DCP Mani said.
