New Delhi: Five days after a PhD scholar at the Jawaharlal Nehru University was molested inside the campus premises, the Delhi Police on Sunday said that they had arrested a 27-year-old man, Akshay Dolai, from West Bengal, in the case and worked it out.
In a press briefing held on Sunday night, DCP (South West) Gaurav Sharma said that the man worked at a mobile repairing and SIM card store in Bhikaji Cama Place here and had initially followed three other women into the campus, with the intention to molest them.
Sharma said that Dolai had had a fight with his wife on January 17 morning, following which she had left their rented home in Munirka for her parents' home. Upset over the fight, Dolai was drinking with the man who owned his shop and once the shop owner left, he went ahead and bought another bottle of beer.
"After drinking this beer, he saw three women walking towards the JNU campus and followed them into the campus premises but when the women went into their respective hostels, he started prowling around the campus' main ring road on his white scooty. There he spotted the victim jogging at night. So, he parked his scooty and waited for the victim," the DCP said.
The police added that when he saw the victim go towards the East Gate Road, he followed her and stopped her at a quiet spot. The woman, thinking he needed directions, stopped. When Dolai then started to molest her, she resisted and took out her phone to call the police. Worried he would get caught, the accused snatched the victim's phone and fled.
In this process, the man fought the victim and was also injured in one of his legs, which the police confirmed after apprehending him, they added.
DCP Sharma added that since the CCTV footage around the area was quite sketchy, they were unable to start the probe as effectively. He added that the JNU campus security had failed to record Dolai's vehicle in their register, which exacerbated their challenge.
The police added that the JNU Students' Union protesting regularly demanding an arrest in the case was also a considerable challenge that they overcame.
Nevertheless, the police said the investigating team scanned footage from over 1,000 CCTV cameras around the JNU campus and traced the route he took to exit the campus and flee. Interestingly, the police found that the accused exited the campus from the West Gate and managed to evade a police picket-checking point before exiting onto the Ring Road.
DCP Sharma said they traced him back to his Munirka home, where he lived with his wife and children, from where they arrested him after conducting raids. The police said that they recovered the white scooty that belonged to him and on which he escaped along with the mobile phone of the victim.
The South West DCP said that they also found the same clothes he was wearing on the day of the crime. "The clothes matched the description provided by the victim and also from the CCTV footage of the day that we traced," he said, adding that their team had managed to successfully work out the sensitive case in a reasonable time.
The police also said that Dolai was familiar with the campus premises since he had been a regular visitor there from 2011 to 2015, during which time he worked as a ticketing agent. He regularly visited the ticketing counter inside the campus at that time and so he was familiar with the premises and entry and exit points, they said.