A lead from the Dhaka police in Bangladesh helped their counterparts in Bengaluru track down the four men and two women who allegedly tortured and sexually assaulted a young woman a little over a fortnight ago. According to sources, the city police arrested the gang within two hours of receiving the information.
The accused had recorded the incident and shared the video clips with their friends in Assam, spurring the police there into action. While the Assam Police posted photographs of the perpetrators on Twitter seeking information, the main lead came from the Dhaka Metropolitan Police. From the video clips, they identified one of the accused as Ridoy Babu alias Tiktok, 26. His full name is Raifatul Islam Ridoy, and he hails from Moghbazar in Dhaka.
They passed on his mobile number to their counterparts in India.
A senior police official said, “Initially, we had some vague leads of a person from Bangladesh involved in the flesh trade at Avalahalli. As we were working on that, we were given a phone number of one of the accused. It turned out to be Ridoy. We tracked him down using the mobile tower location, which showed he was in Avalahalli.”
A team was dispatched to the house of Ridoy and another accused. “One of them tried to escape by jumping off the first floor. The duo led us to the rest of the accused and the scene of the crime, which was a rented accommodation on the fourth floor of a building in Karegowda Layout. It is the residence of three other accused – Mohammed Baba Sheikh and his two wives ,” said a senior police official.
Ridoy Babu was shot in the leg by police when he allegedly tried to escape while reconstruction of the crime scene on Friday morning. He is recovering at Bowring and Lady Curzon Hospital.
On Thursday evening, Dhaka Metropolitan Police held a press conference where Deputy Commissioner of Police Md. Shahidullah said Ridoy had been involved in several anti-social activities under the name Tiktok, and had fled home four months ago without informing his parents. “When we contacted him, he acknowledged that he is the man in the video,” Shahidullah said at the press conference.
Bangladesh’s leading newspaper The Daily Star reported on Friday that the police there contacted Ridoy using his uncle’s WhatsApp. He allegedly not only admitted to being in the video, but also informed police about the identity of the victim, also a resident of Moghbazar. Dhaka police later contacted the girl’s family, who had lost all contact with her for the past two years, but identified her from the video.
The police are gathering information on the gang, and the extent of their activities in Bengaluru.
